


Fangs+Bloodlust

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Series: Night+Hunt [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Blood Drinking, Character Turned Into Vampire, Complete, Fae & Fairies, Fae Mac, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Non-Consensual Touching, Other, Rape/Non-con Elements, Vampire Hunters, Vampire Murdoc, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-20 08:43:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 30,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15530499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: Jack Dalton and his team are the best vampire hunters in Los Angeles, and in their years working for the Phoenix hunter agency, they've built an impressive reputation. But when a mysterious rogue vampire known only as "Murdoc" develops an obsession with Jack's young fae partner, Mac, the team find themselves facing a threat they've never anticipated."Oh Angus, I don't want to kill you. No, not anymore. " Murdoc leans close to the boy's neck, fangs inches from his throat. "I want to make you mine."





	1. Guitar+Smoke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [just_another_outcast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_outcast/gifts).



> Inspired by this moodboard: https://bands-space-and-monsters-oh-my.tumblr.com/post/175903085833/this-mac-vampiremurdoc-moodboard-was-loosely
> 
> Thanks for the amazing prompt! Hope you enjoy what I did with it!

Jack glares at the bouncer, daring the woman to try anything. His hand is brushing the handle of the silver whip coiled against his right leg, letting the chick know that if she moves, Jack will have that thing around her throat and choking her in seconds.

Sure, she’s a good six inches taller than him, and she’s built like a Mack truck, but Jack can see she’s watching his hands, judging whether he’s going to use that weapon. It won’t kill her, not like it will take down a vampire, but it’ll incapacitate her for a while. Jack’s always found the electrically charged silver cable more effective than a taser. Everyone who’s part of the LA “nightlife” knows that Jack Dalton is a dangerous man with his favorite weapon.

He shows the woman his wrist cuff, the dark crimson emblem on it unmistakably Patty’s. The woman studies it, then nods. “Go ahead. If the boss wants you in, you can go.” He steps toward the door, but her voice stops him. “Hey, is pretty boy with you, or is he just another vamp groupie?” _She’s definitely new._

“He’s with me.” Jack nods at Mac, who’s studying something about the sizzling neon sign overhead. Mac glances away from the flickering change of a blood-red cocoon to a similarly crimson butterfly and follows Jack through the door into the smoke, sweat, and pounding bass of the Chrysalis Club.

Jack can tell Mac is nervous; the kid has one hand in his messenger bag, probably twisting a paper clip through his fingers. He launches into a quiet joke, smiling at the memory of one of their early hunts, when he and Mac were still trying to learn each other’s fighting styles (which had been more wildly different than Jack could ever have guessed).

“You’re not carrying garlic powder in that bag, are you?”

“What do you think?” Mac shoves his shoulder, just a little.

“Well, if you’re gonna throw it in a fan and gas the place, make sure I’m clear of the blowback first.” Jack hadn’t been able to catch the vampire they’d gone after that time because he’d been too busy coughing up a lung like everyone else. “And don’t you dare set anything on fire. Unless it’s an emergency.” Jack has lost count of the times he’s had to apologize for damages and mental trauma because of his partner. Vampires and fire are not a good mix. _Another reason I don’t bring him to these places too often._

“Of course,” the kid sounds vaguely insulted, but Jack thinks he has an unhealthy fascination with setting things on fire. “Where’s Patty?”

“Coming. We’re early.” Jack pushes his way through the crowd to get to a slightly less packed section near a wall. It isn’t the first time Jack’s come down here, and things have a tendency to get…bloody. For all that Mac’s a great hunter, he’s still young, and all Jack can see sometimes is a child forced to grow up too fast. He’d rather not risk having more kills on the kid’s conscience if he can help it; that’s Jack’s job and his nightmares to deal with. That part of the job is hell on Mac’s sensitive nature, even when he knows they’re doing the right thing. But desperate times…desperate measures. Jack might need the kid’s expertise at getting out of sticky situations.

The club is an odd mix of true vampires, wanna-bes hanging around hoping to get bitten, and goth kids who think it’s fun to literally flirt with death. The Chrysalis is a popular place for humans and the nightlife to mix. It’s one of the more human-friendly vampire hangouts in the city. Most are dead-only places, where you have to prove no pulse before entering. But that also makes them less likely places for a hungry vampire to find a living snack. Which is what the rogue vamp they’re after seems to like.

In the past three weeks, ten bodies have been found within a mile radius of the Chrysalis Club, all drained of their blood and with the distinctive puncture wounds of a vamp kill. Almost all the victims have been connected back to the club, bearing the red butterfly stamp on their wrists or what remained of their blood containing faint traces of a liquor additive that’s specific to the Chrysalis.

“Is it just me, or is this a lot more crowded than last time?” Mac shouts to be heard over the thudding bass.

“Last time we were here, the owner wasn’t the queen of the LA nightlife,” Jack shouts back. This place has gotten a lot more popular now, and Jack isn’t sure if that’s good or bad. More people means more potential threats, and less ease of movement. Both are problems for hunters. Jack assesses the room. No immediate threat, but he’s learned not to underestimate anyone. He doesn’t really need to do as much scouting as he normally would. Here, he has an inside man. Or woman, as the case is.

Patty Thornton descends the stairs from the balcony, stunning and dangerous in a dress the color of blood. Jack remembers her before she was turned, when they worked together to take down coven after coven. They were young and naive and idealistic then. That's what got her turned.

The Phoenix turns a blind eye to her illegal business now as long as she provides them with intel. She’s risen fast in the city, and last year Jack was invited to the club to celebrate her status as the new vampire leader of LA.

“Well, well. You haven’t aged a day,” Jack laughs as Patty joins them. He used to avoid joking with her about the fact that she still looks twenty-five and he’s clearly on the high side of thirty-five. He’d stopped worrying about hurting her feelings the day she asked him if he’d like her to bite him now, because he was getting a rather impressive collection of grey hairs.

There’s still some of Patty left, even if most of her is buried with her soul, and that's the part that keeps her helping them. She has a lot of other motives too, but Jack would like to believe that she still knows she was his friend, before all this.

Patty rests her fingers on the leather cuff Jack wears, proof that he's an ally of the vampire queen and anyone who touches him answers to her. It’s come in handy more times than he can count.

“I don’t want trouble in here. If you have to get…messy, take it outside.”

“Yes ma’am.” Jack chuckles. Patty knows him a little too well. They used the be the ones who accidentally trashed places together.

Patty leans toward him, glancing over his shoulder at the wild chaos of the dance floor. "I’m sure the rogue you’re looking for is a club regular. I called you because against my better judgement I actually do cooperate with the Phoenix. But this is personal to me, you understand? He's killing on _my_ turf. Damaging the reputation of _my_ club. You take care of this, Dalton, or I will." He knows she’s not lying, her once-grey eyes have gone nearly black and her blood-red fingernails are clenched into her palms so tightly they’d draw blood if any still flowed through her veins.

Vampires are discouraged from dealing with their own kind. Jack still remembers the Coven Wars of '11. When he first met the team he now considers family. Still, he's not eager for a repeat.

He certainly doesn’t regret getting paired with Mac. Well, Angus, but he’d insisted on being called by his last name. When Jack got the dossier and asked what the hell kind of hamburger name that was, the boy had just said something about fae liking to hold onto past traditions, and to please not call him that ever again. And Jack had gone straight to Matty Webber and asked what they were thinking putting a fae-blooded kid in the field. He’d quickly gotten good reason to revise that opinion.

He stopped calling Mac "Tinkerbell" (at least out loud) after the kid took down a whole coven with the crap he found in a soccer mom's minivan. Now he only calls the kid that in his head.   _Hey, I thought it was one of my more inspired puns. Tinker, cause...ya know...you like to tinker with stuff?_ The kid hates it though.

Jack glances around the room, searching for the club regular Patty might be referring to. Honestly, everyone in here looks pretty similar. Jack, with his confident swagger and heavy metal style, fits in at the Chrysalis. Mac, sweet and quiet and wearing his usual plain light clothes, doesn’t really match the setting. He’s a spot of sunlight in a world that thrives on moonless nights, and Jack’s fairly certain he won’t be able to lose the kid even in this crowd, because he’s almost _glowing_  in the dim club lights.

Jack's not sure it was a good idea to bring Mac. Everyone looks at the kid like he's fresh meat. He’s willing to bet most of them don’t know Mac is fae, but they do seem to be fascinated nonetheless. Jack thinks there’s some kind of latent magic behind that interest and attraction. He’s not jealous. _I’m not, I have enough game for ten hunters, even without some fairy dust magic._ And Mac seems oblivious to people’s reactions to him, probably for the best.

Patty leads them both out into the main section of the club, next to the long bar that covers the entire back of the room, then points to the stage. A man in a long black coat, with black hair and a black guitar, is belting out a rock song that sounds something like a remix of “Home on the Range” but with a heck of a lot of guitar solos.

"That's Mad Dog?" Jack asks.

Patty had said when she called that she only knew the man’s stage name; he’d never told her more and only accepted cash payment. Which was one of the reasons she’d been suspicious enough to call.

"They call him that because he likes to bite." Patty’s cold eyes narrow. “I have no proof he’s the one, but the killings began soon after he became one of my regulars.”

The singer drags out a last wailing screech from the guitar, a discordant note that echoes through the whole room. He takes an exaggerated bow, then descends the stage, his ankle-length black trench coat billowing out behind him. Jack’s always been a bit amused by the way some of these city vamps tend to embrace the stereotypes surrounding them, even if they do update their style slightly with the change of times. He’s surprised the coat isn’t lined in red silk.

The guy has a flair for the dramatic. While it’s a good indicator that he takes pride in what he is, a potential red flag for a rogue killer vamp, it’s also not easy for an ostentatious guy like this to be so…invisible. They’ve yet to get any positive description of the killer vamp. Mostly because anyone who saw him is dead. He’s a shadow.

Jack orders a whiskey (no blood, he reminds the bartender at least twice); he’d like to look at least a little off his game to this guy. Their vamp is more likely to spill secrets if he thinks Jack won’t remember anything about the night’s events tomorrow morning.

“Thanks, Patty. Can you do me one last favor? Keep an eye on the kid for me.” _I know, I worry too much._ But this time it’s more than just Jack’s nearly-parental concern. He’d chalk it up to experience and that intuition he has from being in the field a long time. Jack turns to Mac. “I’m gonna go this one solo, but I’ll let you know if I need backup. Okay?” He just has a gut feeling that he shouldn’t let Mac anywhere near that guy. The kid nods and immediately becomes engrossed in studying the labels on the drinks behind the bar. _Probably wondering which of those spontaneously combust when mixed._

Jack walks over to where the singer is cleaning his guitar and putting it away. “Good show.” Jack leans against the stage, surreptitiously sticking a tracker onto the guitar case for Riley to ping. “Can I buy you a round?”

“You’re not exactly my type,” the vamp responds, shrugging. “I like them with a little more…”

“Hair?” Jack wonders if a joke is a good idea, _when in doubt always go with the joke…_

“Brains.”

“Hey, looks can be deceiving. How do you know I’m not a theoretical astropsychic?”

“First of all, because I believe the word you’re looking for is astrophysicist. Secondly, you’re packing too much heat to be anything but a hunter.” The vamp is looking pointedly at where Jack’s coat covers the whip and his backup gun.

“Thought it was worth a shot.” Jack continues to play the dumb card. Maybe the guy will decide he’s an easy mark. _Catch him in the act, that would be enough to put him away. I was hoping to get him to brag to me and try to impress me, but if he tries to kill me that’s even better._ And then Jack has a brief moment of concern about his thought process. He’s been a hunter too long.

The vamp regards him lazily. “As much as I’m enjoying your game, I don’t have all night to run around in circles. If I were looking for anything, it would be that lovely little fae you came with.” Jack startles.

“Oh yes, I saw him the moment you came through the door. Those of us who are forced to walk the nights are always dazzled by such a pure…light.” He glances almost fondly at Mac, whose seat at the bar is almost directly under one of the lights, which makes his blond hair shine and his overall paleness glow. “You’re fortunate,” the vamp continues. “To spend your days in the company of one of the last of the true fae children.”

“He’s pretty nice to have around,” Jack says, coolly, but he’s holding his glass in a death grip. _Knew it was a bad idea to bring Mac down here._

“He’s certainly inherited the best of their lineage.” Jack can see the vamp’s eyes roving over the kid, assessing him.

"I hear guitarists are good with their hands." Jack wants to get this guy's attention off Mac and on him. He's supposed to be the one they go for. He can handle himself. So can Mac, generally, but if this is the vampire they’re chasing he's already proven he’s not your average bloodsucker, and Jack doesn’t want the kid tangling with that.

“You were amusing, but I’m growing tired of your juvenile ploys.” There’s only a moment for Jack to realize that’s all the warning he’s going to get, and then the vamp leaps for him. He’s only just able to dodge, but the club is crowded and he trips over someone else’s feet. Then he hears a very familiar shout.

“Jack! Cover your eyes!”

He does, and the next second he smells alcohol and flame, and hears angry shouts. He opens his eyes to find that there are flames reaching nearly to the ceiling, there’s a second row of fire making a path to the door, and Mac’s standing there with two more bottles in his hands.

The wall of flames stops the vampires in their tracks. Jack can hear Patty cursing him. _Sorry, Pat. But really, I promised_ I _wouldn’t mess up your club. Never said anything about the kid doing it._

As they run for the door, Jack hears one voice rise above the crackling flames and the other vampires’ shouts.

“Oh, you might want to remember my name, hunter,” the vamp singer calls out as Mac and Jack slip out the door. “My friends call me Murdoc.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter! I'm not entirely sure about what my update schedule will be since I'm changing jobs, but I should have another chapter up by the end of the week!


	2. Names+Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ran across some interesting fae lore, and thought "why not?" so there's some backstory for Mac in this chapter.

“You lost him?” Matty’s eyes are almost as cold as Patty’s. She leans over the War Room table, glaring at Jack where he’s sitting across from her.

“He got the drop on us, Matty.” Jack says. He doesn’t feel like going into details about exactly _how_ Murdoc distracted him so badly. _Mac’s just gonna argue if I say I was worried about him._  It’s always the same, because Mac _is_ trained for this, but Jack worries anyway. Jack had argued against putting him in the field, period, when he first met the kid. Mac hadn’t looked like your average punk-rock, black-leather-and-tattoos vamp hunter. More like a high school nerd. Nervous, fidgety, pale and blond and blue-eyed. A pretty boy, not a field operator.

But Matty had insisted Mac had a good skill set. Fae were apparently incredible creative improvisers. Jack had always just thought of them as glittery princesses. There were so damn many _rules_ you had to follow when working with fae, which was why Jack had avoided them. He didn’t have time to waste tiptoeing around some entitled brat’s sensitive feelings.

Jack had given the boy hell about his fae bloodlines for weeks, asking him every time he so much as slowed his pace if he was too “fragile” or “delicate” for this job. But the kid hadn’t broken, just gotten this steely coldness in his eyes and done whatever needed to be done.

Once, Jack didn’t find out until after a mission that Mac had been working on a cracked ankle, but hadn’t said a thing. He’d felt so guilty about being hard on the kid that he’d gone down to the infirmary to give the kid an earful about trusting him enough to tell him something was wrong, only to discover Mac had already snuck out and was nowhere to be found.

Jack had gone straight to Matty, asking what the kid was thinking and how he was supposed to work with someone who hid the truth from him, and he’d never forget the conversation.

_“What did you expect, Dalton?” Matty’s voice had been cold, angrier than Jack had heard her in a long time. “You’ve been giving him hell for weeks about not being good enough.”_

_“I never meant for him to do something like this!”_

_“You know absolutely nothing about that boy.” Matty had glared Jack down until he sat, unwillingly. “He asked me not to tell you anything, but I’ve seen enough of this. Now he’s hurt because of his own stubborn pride and your idiotic behavior. Do you know where he was, before we recruited him? The last agency he worked for used his name to control him, Jack. And when you made that stupid joke, you terrified him.”_

_“I would never…” Jack had heard of agencies so desperate to have a fae in their ranks that they would resort to using the ancient name magic. It was protocol for a fae’s partner or handler to know the name, just in case of the worst, but some agencies took advantage. “Oh shit.” That haunted look in Mac’s eyes, the way he flinched whenever Jack spoke directly to him…“I need to go talk to him.”_

_“He didn’t want anyone to know, Jack.” Matty had looked so...sad. “Not only is he terrified someone is going to do it again, that’s a humiliating thing for a fae to endure. To have had every bit of control taken away, to be forced to do whatever they wanted him to, even to kill…”_

_“I really messed up, didn’t I?” Mac had been treated like a slave. And then Jack went and acted like an insensitive jerk because he’d assumed Mac's withdrawn silence was the stubbornness of some entitled kid._

_“He never wanted you to find out. He’ll be angry. And hurt.”_

_“We’re partners. He needs to know I’m never, ever going to do that to him. He needs to be able to trust me.” If there was a binding magic, Jack was going to swear on it that he’d never, ever use Mac’s real name again. Not even as a joke._

The apology, and the beginnings of a friendship, took place at Mac’s house, surrounded by forest, far enough from the city that the kid didn’t get so overwhelmed by the barrage of the modern age. Mac hadn’t made him swear to anything, and he’d been angry at both Matty for betraying his trust and Jack for...well, everything, but they’d worked it out. And Jack had made sure anyone who so much as tried to learn Mac’s name was sorry.

“At least you got the tracker placed,” Riley says, pulling up her laptop. “And…it’s still at the club.”

“He’s smart. Probably saw me put it on the case and didn’t take it with him.” Jack sighs. This has been a totally wasted op, and on top of that there’s now a potentially murderous vampire who’s taken an interest in Mac, and is likely out stalking the streets as they sit here.

“Did you at least get his phone number?” Riley asks.

“Nope. He wasn’t interested in my flirting. I even turned on the old Dalton charm.”

Riley outright laughs. “You mean cheesy dad jokes and stupid one-liners?”

“Hey, don’t knock the Dalton charm! It works on all the living and most of the undead.”

“Whatever you say.” Riley goes back to her laptop. “If he was taking only cash payments, he’s smart about hiding his tracks. Probably doesn’t even have a phone. But I had to ask.”

Riley became part of the Phoenix a little over two years ago, when she went on a one-woman crusade to save her mother from a coven and accidentally got in the middle of a Phoenix op. She’d blown the whole thing and nearly gotten everyone killed. But rather than defend herself she’d just done what she had to do to help them repair the damage. They’d gotten the coven, Riley’s mother, and also a new asset.

Riley’s a bit of a loose cannon, but she respects Jack and he respects her. He might also be not-actually-dating her mom, but he hasn’t decided what that is yet. _I mean, when the relationship starts with you busting into a coven lair to break her out, how do you possibly not let her down on a second date?_ He hasn’t figured that out yet.

“So I’m guessing this means you’re out of ideas on how to find him?” Matty says, glancing at Riley.

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

“Next time, I’ll try to whip up something you can us that doesn't need you to get so close,” Bozer says, already pulling out his tablet to make notes.

Their newest recruit is Mac’s roommate and slightly over-obsessed with vampires best friend. Apparently he’d been the authority on all things bloodsucker since middle school, when he convinced himself his first date was actually a vampire trying to kill him. That obsession had made him rather an odd man out, which led to his friendship with Mac, another misfit. And when he accidentally got in the middle of one of their ops, thinking Mac was in trouble, they’d had no choice but to pull him in. _Well, Matty suggested erasing his memory, but I think she was joking. Maybe._

“So we have a probable ID of the suspect, but nothing conclusive,” Matty mutters. “Bozer, get to work on some sketch mocks, given Dalton and MacGyver’s descriptions.” It’s bad if she’s going with last names. _I’m gonna hear about this for weeks. Until I do something that’s crazy enough to erase this incident from her memory._

“Already on it, Director.” Bozer’s picked up on the formality in her tone as well. That’s basically Matty’s equivalent of yelling. He tosses an image onto the screen. “That look like your guy?”

Jack shakes his head, because somehow the rendering doesn’t capture the terrible fascination in those black eyes.

Mac, on the other hand, is nodding. “I didn’t get a close look at him, but that seems right. Jack?”

“Yeah, it’s decent.” The features are the same, the hair, the nose and the fangs (left slightly shorter than the right, chipped slightly, he doesn’t know why he fixated on that detail). But those eyes…Jack feels like he’s looking at a different person here, because of that alone. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget that single-minded stare the minute the vamp saw Mac. There was nothing but pure possessive lust there. Jack’s faced down a lot of killers, but nothing has shaken him as much as this one.

Matty studies the rendering carefully. “He doesn’t look familiar, but if he’s good at staying out of sight he may have operated in other areas where killings like this happened. I’ll contact some other agencies and see if they’ve dealt with any similar cases, especially anything that stopped recently for unexplained reasons. Maybe we can trace any path he’s left us.”

Jack sighs and stretches, feeling a yawn in his throat.

Matty is apparently just as worn down. “I think we should call it a night. We’ll take this up again this evening.” There’s only a little more than an hour until sunrise, so vamps are scurrying back to their lairs to avoid the light. There won’t be much chance of finding Murdoc (at least they have a name, but Jack guesses it’s nowhere near his real one) now.

“See ya.” Riley packs up her computer and pulls on a hoodie. “I’ll keep checking the underground vamp sites, see if there’s any chatter. Maybe he’s looking for a new gig since you guys messed up this one.”

“I’m gonna call Leanna. She might want to grab breakfast.” Bozer’s possibly-girlfriend is a huntress from an agency based further north, and they met when their paths crossed trailing the same coven. The two rarely have time to spend together, with the demands of their jobs, but it’s likely the best relationship either of them can hope for.

Jack knows from personal experience that for hunters, dating outside the pool of their own kind tends to go poorly. When your day ends as most normal people’s begins, and romantic dinner dates become breakfasts at corner diners, with a cup of coffee instead of a glass of wine, only certain people are interested. Usually the ones with the same jobs as you. The only non-hunter date Jack ever came close to succeeding with was a cop who worked a graveyard shift.

“Call us if you hear anything, Matty.” Jack wants to stay, even if he is bone-dead tired, because he doesn’t think he won’t be haunted by nightmares until that vamp is behind silver bars. The way he’d looked at Mac...Jack will be seeing those eyes in his dreams all day. “I’m taking you home, kid.”

Mac doesn’t have a car. He prefers walking places, or Jack picks him up (sure it takes an extra twenty minutes to get to the kid’s house but who’s complaining). Usually after a stressful night Mac likes to walk, let himself relax and breathe fresh air and enjoy the quiet sunrises. But there’s no way Jack’s letting Mac walk anywhere tonight.

Jack’s car is old, battered, and full of anti-vampire charms. It seems to be an unstated fact that hunters prefer classics. Those two roving ones who came through a while ago had a gorgeous black Impala that Jack had greatly admired, but he still loves his baby. The old GTO belonged to his father, who passed both that and the legacy of the hunters on to Jack when he retired from the field.

The car smells like someone’s been delivering extra-garlic pizzas with it, but Jack isn’t about to be surprised by a vamp that’s broken into his car and is waiting inside to ambush him. He climbs in and Mac gets in the other side, stretching out in the seat and relaxing, eyes half closed already.

Mac is always so alert in the field, watching every movement like a skittish deer, ready to bolt or fight or do whatever the situation requires. But after an op is over, when it’s just him and Jack, he lets down that guard and there’s a quiet softness to him, that childlike air the fae never seem to lose. He trusts Jack completely, and that’s something Jack would say he’s proud of. Maybe the thing he’s most proud of.

He reaches over to ruffle the kid’s hair before starting the car, and Mac makes a sleepy sound of protest and pushes his hand away. “Stop that.” He sounds and looks adorably like a pouty teenager, and once again Jack wants to argue that he shouldn’t be out there. He shouldn’t be surrounded by creeps who look at him the way Murdoc did tonight. But he also knows that Mac would say he doesn’t want to leave. Being a hunter is what he loves; he wants to help people, to protect them from the things they’ll never see coming for them. He’s too good for this line of work. And not for the first time, Jack wonders whether that’s a good thing, or a bad one.


	3. Book+Dawn

There’s something about tonight Jack isn’t telling Mac, and it’s putting Mac on edge. He chalks it up to that odd little fae sense of danger he has. The one he kind of ignores most of the time. 

He knows Jack was worried about taking him to the Chrysalis. Despite the fact that Mac has been a hunter for years, Jack tends to make sure he stays away from places like that. Sometimes he finds the overprotectiveness stifling, but he knows Jack means well. Losing a partner has scarred the older hunter for life and made him desperate not to let it happen again. But Mac can take care of himself. 

“Jack, what was that in there?” He didn’t want to talk about this with the others there. Jack doesn’t need Matty giving him more grief about a minor screw-up. But the thing is, Jack getting into a situation that bad…isn’t normal. He’s usually more aware of the danger before he gets in the middle of it, at least. 

“Definitely our guy.” Jack sighs, looking out the window of the car. “And now he’ll never show his face there again.”

“We’ll find him.” Mac pulls a paperclip out of his pocket, absentmindedly twisting it into a row of fangs. “But that’s not what I meant. You were…I’ve never seen a situation go that bad that fast. It looked like you were…”

“Panicking?” Jack’s hands go white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “He…He was going to go after you, kid.”

“You know it wouldn’t be the first time a vamp’s decided I’m an easy mark,” Mac mutters offhandedly. Everyone underestimates him at first. Their mistake.

“It wasn’t that. It was the way he was looking at you. He didn’t want to kill you. He wanted to own you.” Jack’s voice is uncharacteristically shaky. Mac doesn’t often hear the older hunter’s calm control break. Something really bad has to happen, or he has to be genuinely afraid, for that kind of emotion to slip through.

“Well, I know you had my back. I’m not worried about some vamp.” Mac leans against the window. He doesn’t want to think about what Jack means.  _ No one owns me. Not anymore. _

“He’s not just ‘some vamp’, man. He’s ruthless.”

“And we’re going to track him down.” 

Jack sighs and punches the steering wheel as they roll to a stop at a red light. “He knew what we were there for the second we walked in.”

“You carry a whip as a concealed weapon, and I’m clearly fae. Neither of us are exactly mister inconspicuous,” Mac says, but the laughter falls flat. 

He doesn’t say anything more until they pull up outside his house. 

“Sure you don’t want me to stay over?” Jack asks when he gets out.  _ I ought to let him, he’s stressed about me and he just wants to be sure I’m okay. _

Mac’s head is still pounding from the combination of the club’s music volume, the chaotic light-show that had been going on inside, and the adrenaline of their escape. He needs to be alone for a while, he needs silence and stillness, or he’s going to panic. And while Jack is good for many things, silence is not one of them. When Jack is worried, he talks. A lot. He’ll likely sit up all day recounting stories of past hunts. It’s not that Mac doesn’t love him, dearly, but he’ll be fine. The sun’s nearly up, no vamp would be foolish enough to come this far out of town now. Murdoc’s too smart for that. But Jack will worry, and Mac doesn’t want him to fret. “Come in.”

Mac doesn’t bother with a key, just rests his hand on the carved wood of the lock, feeling the twisted vine design shift under his hand.  _ I may not be completely fae, but some of the magic is really nice to have.  _ The whole house is tuned in to the natural rhythm of the world, just like Mac. It’s built directly into living rock as a foundation, with the central rowan tree that makes up its heart spreading its branches through the rafters. 

“You’re welcome to make yourself breakfast if you want. I’m not hungry.” Mac leaves Jack in the kitchen. He’s pretty sure the older hunter will pour himself a glass of whiskey rather than start making pancakes, though. He has that look in his eyes. 

On any other day, Mac would make them both something to eat (and probably mess it up) before they both crashed on the first flat surface they found and slept until the sun went down. But he has an idea and he can’t eat when he’s thinking. And if Jack is hungry he knows where everything is in the house anyway.

Mac goes to his room, ducking under the tree branch that has curved just perfectly to form an arched doorway, and pulls up a few of the floorboards. Nestled beneath them, wrapped in a scrap of silky cloth, is a deceptively small midnight blue book covered in golden sunrises, compass roses, and flowers.  _ Grandfather’s tome. _

Mac’s grandfather was nearly pure fae, one of the last remaining of an ancient bloodline that’s now all but extinct. His mother, whose fae blood had given her an overwhelming empathy and a compassion for any living thing, had died right in front of Mac, in a hospital, so far removed from all the wild things she loved. And his father, a human hunter...Mac has no idea where he disappeared to.  _ Sometimes it hurts less to think maybe he was turned on a hunt. That he didn’t just get tired of me and leave.  _

Vampires and fae fought each other long before the human world was aware of their existence. They’re the flip sides of a coin, light and darkness, life and death, hope and despair. Grandfather always said there was a balance to maintain. He told Mac story after story of the great wars of the past, when the two kinds almost drove each other to extinction. 

The book is the record of Mac’s family line, and the lore they acquired over the years. Mac hasn’t touched the book much; there are too many memories that still hurt. But maybe there’s some spell, some magic, that can help them track a vampire.

He’s never had to resort to consulting the tome before, but he’s never seen Jack this rattled before. Not even when they faced down a four-thousand year old daywalker and ended the fabled “Cairo Curse” once and for all. And Jack had sworn up and down that vampires and mummies were both the most freaky things in the world, and combining them had been his worst nightmare.

Mac opens the book, feeling the rich texture of the pages. Nothing compares to fae craftsmanship. The fae take so much pride in everything they do, they put so much attention into detail and making something the best it can possibly be. Humans are always impressed by fae work, not that they see if often. Mac, living in a world where everything seems like a pale, shoddy imitation of the things his grandfather could create, always feels a little closer to his fae side when he’s here, in the house, surrounded by Grandfather’s work. 

Jack is snoring, shifting around on the couch. Even with his door closed Mac can hear it. He needs quiet. He can’t concentrate when there are human noises. Birds and insects don’t bother him at all; he can read for hours surrounded by crickets and cicadas and wind in the trees. But human noises are distracting. When his father sent him to a human school to try and make him fit in better, the teachers all thought he was autistic or had other problems with long names and lots of letters. They almost sent him away to a school that was supposed to be for people like him. But then he met Bozer, and he learned to act more normal. He still can’t stop the fidgetiness he gets indoors, or how his mind latches onto any sound that isn’t found in nature. 

He knows Jack will be upset if he wakes up and Mac is gone, but judging by that snoring he’s going to sleep for hours. Mac only needs a little time to read. He’ll be back well before Jack knows he left. 

There’s a small clearing a short walk into the woods, a place Mac made for himself when he first came here to live with Grandfather. No one but Jack and Bozer know it exists. Mac sits down, feeling the dew soaking into his clothes and brushing off on his bare feet. The cool air is refreshing after the heat of the city, especially the sweat and fire in the Chrysalis Club. 

Mac sits in the darkness and silence, listening to the tiny sounds of birds and insects, letting the smoke and clatter and overstimulation of the city slide away. The house and land have been his family’s retreat for generations. Fae always have some sort of refuge like this, and Mac’s seen a lot of them over the years, but never one he’d trade this for. 

He feels it before he senses it any other way. A chill, deathly coldness, wrong in the abundance of  _ life _ Mac can hear all around him. He jumps to his feet, but it’s too late. There’s a shadow between him and the house, a shadow that isn’t moving, isn’t breathing, but is still menacing. 

He shouldn’t be here. It’s less than ten minutes until sunrise. There’s no time for him to get to safety...unless he’s planning on hiding inside the house. Mac flinches at the thought. The house is fae-built, but Mac’s had to make it less magical so Bozer can live there with him, and so Jack and the team can visit. Its defenses aren’t as strong as they used to be when it was Grandfather’s. 

“What do you want?” He slips the tome carefully into his messenger bag.  _ Of course he’s already seen it.  _ Vampires have impeccable vision. “What did you come here for?”

“Don’t you already know? I’ve waited a long time to find someone like you.” Murdoc’s voice is low and silky. He’s moving now, slinking slowly toward Mac, his coat billowing behind him like wings. 

“Well, you can’t have me.” Mac reaches into his pocket. The silver-bladed Swiss Army Knife his grandfather gave him is there, the silver safe for fae but deadly to vampires. He just needs Murdoc to get closer...without letting him bite him. That might be a bit problematic, but Mac has always loved a good challenge.

“You can let me take you now, or I can drain your banal little hunter guard-dog’s blood as he sleeps.” Murdoc turns away suddenly, glancing at the house, his dark eyes glittering in the rising grey light. Maybe Mac doesn’t need to stab him after all. He only has to stall till the sun comes up.

“Touch him, and I’ll kill you.” Mac curls his hand around the knife, opening the longest of the blades. 

“Oooh. So there is a dark side to you carefree creatures. And loyalty too?” Murdoc smiles, showing his fangs. “I thought fae looked out for only their own.”

“They are my family. And if you touch them, you will pay.” Mac’s edging to the side, because if he can get between Murdoc and the house he can get there first, he can warn Jack, they can catch this monster....

“Didn’t you hear me? I said you could protect them...if you come with me. No tricks, no escapes, mind you, or you’ll be breaking our little bargain.”

“Or you can leave, while you still can.”

“Choose, Angus. Or I will.” Murdoc’s cold smile grows wider. He knows Mac’s real name. The name he doesn’t let anyone use. 

Matty and Jack know it, but they would never use it against him. He doesn’t like to think about...before. But Jack and Matty would never, ever force him to do something against his will. 

“I was hoping to avoid resorting to this, dear Angus, but I’m afraid you’ve proved to be too stubborn.” Murdoc whispers a few words, in a language Mac hasn’t heard since Matty pulled him out of that last agency, when the people who used it owned him body and soul. His feet are suddenly frozen in place. Murdoc lifts the knife from his hand, the silver harmlessly resting in his black-gloved palm.

“So brave, little one. But all for naught.” Murdoc leans toward his neck, and Mac wants to shiver but his body is frozen, and he can’t scream or fight or shudder or cry as the fangs slowly sink into his veins. The world wavers and dims, and the last thing he hears, as he falls, is Murdoc’s soft, falsely soothing voice. “Shhhh, now….”


	4. Words+Iron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit of a shortie, but I'm planning on posting two today, so...Here you are!

There’s a bandaged gash on Mac’s arm when he wakes up, and his neck hurts. His wrists and ankles are aching and burning, and he knows why when he’s able to move his head enough to look. He’s been bound with iron chains. He’s not fully fae, or the iron would have killed him already, but it _hurts._

“Wake up, little one.” The blurred shape in front of him transforms into the vampire, straddling a chair casually. His lips are blood-stained. _Is that mine?_ Mac shivers, and then the shaking won’t stop. Wherever he is, it’s cold, and his clothes are damp.

Mac tries to speak, even though he doesn’t know what exactly he would say. But he can’t even force a single word out. Murdoc stands up and walks over to him, agonizingly slowly. There’s a huge smile on his face that shows his fangs, sickly pink, stained with Mac's blood.

Murdoc unwraps the cloth wrapped around Mac’s arm, which was once white but is now streaked and stained crimson. A fresh trickle of blood wells up, sliding warm and sticky down Mac’s arm. He shudders at the feeling.

Murdoc dips one finger in the blood, then brings it to his lips. He tastes a single drop, then licks the rest of the blood from his finger. His eyes never leave Mac’s face.

“A pure fae’s blood would be much too…powerful…for any child of the night. But you, your human side…there is only enough of the light to be pleasantly painful.” He smiles. “I thought as much.”

Mac coughs and turns away, stomach twisting. _This is horrible._

“And then of course, there is your touch. As mine freezes you, yours burns me.” He rests his fingers on Mac’s arm, and the corners of his eyes twitch with the stinging pain. “But there is no love without pain, or it is cheap. Pain is what makes something…worthwhile.”

“How…” Even a single word is an effort to get out, and Mac lets his head fall back to his chest, exhausted. But Murdoc seems to have guessed his meaning.

"With your blood in my veins, I have no need to fear the sunlight. I can walk boldly where I choose, whenever I choose. The light in you is enough to protect me."

“S-so...you...came to...find me...and if it...hadn’t worked...you would...would have...died.” This vamp is out of his mind. This has gone beyond a simple interest in Mac’s fae nature. This guy is obsessed to the point of taking a massive gamble with his own...life isn’t the right word here, but nothing else makes sense. Mac can feel his mind wandering, thoughts jumping at random.

“It was a risk I was more than willing to take. My life has become boring, you know.” Murdoc waves a hand flippantly, glancing off into a corner of the room. “It’s so _easy_ to kill humans. They’re so...fragile. And stupid. And what is a life worth if there is no thrill in it? I might as well have let myself turn to dust. But then you came along, and...you are a challenge, dear, sweet Angus, and there is nothing I love more.”

“I...don’t see...that I was...much...of a challenge. You...can kill me...anytime...you want...so how does that...make me...interesting?” Mac genuinely doesn’t understand. Murdoc keeps saying easy kills aren’t enough, but he has Mac tied up at his mercy. Mac could see a game of cat and mouse, some battle of wits fought in the underground of the city, being what this monster wants. But this...this doesn’t fit.

"Oh Angus, I don't want to kill you. No, not anymore. " He leans close to the boy's neck. "I want to make you mine."

“No!” Mac knows he’s not getting away easily, but anything, anything is better than being turned. _Come on, think. There’s got to be something you can do._ He’s gotten away from vampires before, he just needs to think. But this one is different. There’s something about him that steals any logic Mac can find and replaces it with an icy fear that freezes him in place.

“Oh, your fear is so...simple. Why is it that everyone fears becoming a child of the night? Humans spend their lives seeking immortality, and then they shun and fear those who offer it to them. They send hunters to kill us, when all we want is to give them what they so deeply desire.”

“Because it’s not a life.” Mac chokes out.

“And theirs is? Everyone has their addictions, you know. The humans call us monsters because we are addicted to blood. While they spend their lives using others’ bodies for their pleasure. What hypocrites. They are slaves to their drugs and their desires, they are the same as the night children. And their addictions can kill as surely as ours.” Mac shakes his head. In his own twisted way, Murdoc’s logic isn’t wrong. But he’s a killer. And killers, human or vampire or fae, are wrong. _There’s always another way._

“But they choose those lives. You don’t give anyone a choice.” Mac’s trying to keep his thoughts straight, it’s so hard with the way he feels like he’s going to pass out again at any moment.

"Oh Angus, I expected you to understand me. You...are special. Not like the others, those dull, slow little humans. They don't understand us, so they fear us."

Mac flinches involuntarily, trying to push back at the memories escaping the neat little boxes he's stored them away in. _Freak. Not really human, is it? Those kind are dangerous. Keeping them under control is the only way we’ll be safe._ The ghosts of all the hits and kicks and hateful words need to stay locked away where he can't be hurt by them, but it’s so dark and so cold and he’s afraid. He wants Jack...Jack’s not afraid of him. Jack trusts him.

“That’s not true.” Mac can hear the hollowness in his own words.

"Oh, they do fear you." Murdoc rests his hand on Mac’s shoulder. “Why do you think it’s law that all fae must register their true names? So very helpful for me, I must admit. Why do you think that agency has yours? Why do you think your handlers know it? Because everyone thinks someday, the fae are finally going to stop being passive and quiet and enduring and they’re going to do something about how shamefully they’ve been treated.”

“How are you better?” Mac feels a bit more awake, and he tugs at the chains even though he knows it’s useless. “You’ve tied me up, used my name against me, everything you say _they_ want to do.”

"You and I are more alike than you want to admit, and I want you to see it." Murdoc rests his hand on Mac’s arm, pressing softly against the opened cut. Mac shudders. "You’ve always known they’re not like you. That you don’t belong with mere humans. You can't tell me they've never disappointed you. Never misunderstood what you are. You can't tell me you've never wished they were More. Like. You.” He punctuates each word with a soft tap to Mac’s cheek. “You're better than them. They're holding you back, slowing you down, keeping you from spreading your wings. I want to let you fly."

"Then why am I the one tied up?"

Mordoc sighs, moving back slightly. “If nothing else can convince you, then let me appeal to that pathetic sense of protectiveness you feel for the humans. They are _so_ inferior to you, and so is their blood. If you will allow me the...pleasure...of having free access to yours, then I promise, I will not touch another of them as long as you stay with me.”

“Why should I believe you?” Mac tugs at the chains, ignoring the burning pain as the iron digs deeper into his skin.

“I am a man of my word. I would not promise you this if I meant none of it. And besides, to drink the blood of a mere _human_ when I have _this_ ,” He swipes his finger through Mac’s blood and brings it to his lips again, “would be like buying a cheap, tasteless supermarket wine when there is a 1949 Richebourg in your cellar. It would be like marrying a princess and spending your nights with a sickly whore you hired for pennies.” Mac shivers, a full-body shudder that has nothing to do with the chill in the room or the vampire’s cold hands.

Murdoc glances at him, shrugging slightly. “Unfortunately, I do not believe you will be as willing to fulfill your end of the bargain. But don’t worry, I have made arrangements that I hope in time you will come to find satisfactory.”

Mac doesn’t want to think about what kind of arrangements those are going to be.

“Now, the fun can begin.”

Murdoc sinks his fangs into Mac’s neck again, and the world twists and turns crimson, then black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next POV coming is Murdoc's, so we all have that to look forward to...


	5. Daylight+Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter gave me a serious case of the creeps. It's really super dark, so be warned.

It’s been far too long since he’s watched a sunrise. Murdoc savors every change of hue in the cloudy sky, the midnight indigo that has always told him he needs to return to his lair, the blood reds that are almost as satisfying as an arterial flow, the soft peach that reminds him of unblemished skin, and finally, streaks of gold overlaying pale, clear blue. Just like the hair and eyes of that fae child inside. It’s fitting that a creature of the light should be the one to give Murdoc the chance to take pleasure in a sunrise.

Murdoc knows the boy’s an unusual choice. Most vampires avoid the fae children like they avoid all light, drawn to it like a moth but knowing that if they get too close the light will burn them. But Murdoc has always found them intoxicating in a way that makes him an oddity even among his fellow night children, and even more than that he appreciates the risk. Angus’s blood is still stinging on his lips and tongue, and his fingertips where he dipped them into the crimson river to leave a message for that stupidly dull hunter. He wishes he could see the look on the man’s face when he wakes up. His worry inside the Chrysalis was absolutely tantalizing, the fear in his eyes when Murdoc so much as glanced at the fae.

He wants to see the boy again, because as much as the hunter’s fear was a pleasure, the fae’s is intoxicating. Angus’s eyes are shockingly expressive. Every emotion laid bare, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. Murdoc isn’t sure how long the boy will take to wake up, but he doesn’t want to miss it. He turns his back on the sunrise a bit reluctantly. But the fae will be even more lovely and fascinating. And after all, now that he has Angus, he can watch as many sunrises as he desires.

He’s known about the properties of fae blood for a long time, and has planned for this since he arrived in LA. His lair has been remade for the express purpose of preventing the escape of any fae-born. Complete with iron restraints and doors, and windowless underground rooms. No chance of communicating with the outside world through even something as simple as a bird perching on a windowsill.

The fae is currently inside the heart of Murdoc’s lair, chained with heavy iron shackles to a sturdy chair. The chains are by no means a necessity, not when he knows Angus’s name, but there’s a pleasure to physical control. And Murdoc would like to see the boy fight back a little. Along with the light inside him, there’s a fierce spirit, and it would be a shame to freeze it simply for the sake of having a docile victim.

The boy is blinking sluggishly, only half aware of his surroundings. His eyes are full of shadows, but Murdoc watches the awareness rise in them, brightening them like the dawn sky. When the fae sees the vampire in front of him, those lovely eyes widen and the brightness is positively beautiful.

Murdoc has always been drawn to the light. He loves the power of darkness, the fear it instills, but there is something about the fragility and purity of light that he finds compelling. Perhaps because in the end, light always gives way to dark and life falls prey to death.

He wants to conquer, to turn this light to himself. To possess something this beautiful; it would be such a victory. To turn this creature of light into a servant of darkness.

It won’t be easy. The boy argues every point Murdoc makes. _He must see the logic, the truth, he must._ But he refuses to accept it. He still believes in goodness, _ah, so naive, and how can you be when humans have betrayed your trust again and again?_

Murdoc’s done some asking around, and this boy’s been a hunter for some time, originally with an agency that according to all accounts controlled him with his name. A sweet tidbit Murdoc has filed away. And after all this, after every undeserved cruelty his life has thrown at him, Angus is still kind and gentle. _And it will be all the more satisfying to be the one who finally breaks him. To damage him more than his own flesh and blood have._

When he bites Angus, and watches that sky-clear blue in his eyes dull and fade, it’s almost a disappointment. The boy is docile now, and it should be pleasing, but it isn’t, just like when using Angus’s name tore the soul from him and made him a shell. Murdoc wants obedience from a boy with the light still in his eyes. That will take time. Fortunately, that’s something they have an endless supply of.

In the meantime, the rush of his blood is enough. More than enough. Murdoc hasn’t taken this much pleasure in a feed in...years, and when he was stealing the boy away from his home he’d needed to move quickly, no time to savor the experience. Now, he can enjoy the way the light-rich blood burns his tongue and settles warmly in his stomach, the feel of Angus’s satiny, warm skin against his lips, the soft silkiness of his hair when Murdoc tangles a hand in it to hold the boy’s head still as he falls unconscious. It’s like sitting down to a seven course meal when he’s been living for months on stale food from trash cans.

When he’s done, and not because he’s satisfied but because any more would have been too much light and perfection to bear, Murdoc moves his captive to the cell he’s prepared for him. The room is exactly what he needs, cold and dark and solid stone, the only escape a door forged from pure iron. No fae can escape this.

The fae is lovely when he’s asleep, long lashes closed against his pale cheeks, soft lips slightly parted, showing the beginnings of the tiny fangs every host develops (nowhere near the elegance of true fangs, but a clear mark of their role), hands relaxed and delicate-looking. Murdoc feels a rush of genuine excitement; this one is all his to enjoy breaking. He can hardly wait to begin, to see those wide eyes filled and shining with tears, to hear the soft, strong voice breaking from pained screams. There is no beauty without pain, and Murdoc is planning on creating a masterpiece.

Of course, if the fae would simply comply with Murdoc’s demands of him, there would be no reason for this. But he’s already proven to be quite stubborn. That won’t be a problem. In fact, it will only make this whole process more satisfying.

Murdoc has to say he’s impressed when, within twenty-four hours, Angus very nearly manages an escape. If Murdoc hadn’t left his ravens to watch the boy, he thinks the fae very well might have succeeded.

It’s not so much the attempt that surprises him; everyone he’s let live more than a few minutes has tried to escape him, and failed miserably each time, it’s the way Angus has done it. He hasn’t outright fought Murdoc, like the hunters he’s interrogated over the years, or tried to dig through the walls like some humans (they seem to think they can tear away stone with bare hands).

No, when Murdoc comes to the cell, Angus is carefully folding a strip of cloth torn from his shirt into a tiny piece exactly the size of the door’s deadbolt. Likely planning on jamming it into the doorframe when he’s taken out again to keep the lock from fastening.

“Angus, Angus,” Murdoc scolds, and the fear in the boy’s eyes is so...tantalizing. “Now what did I say about our bargain? You wouldn’t want me to pay a visit to your dear little human friends, now would you?”

“No.” The fae stares at the ground, shuddering. “Don’t. Please.”

Murdoc knows it’s not necessary to make an escape any more difficult. His ravens will alert him to any attempts. But he wants Angus to know there is no way out. _When he stops fooling himself, stops telling himself he can find a way to escape, then the work can begin._ Murdoc’s only speeding up the process.

“Angus. _Resmish ae merren. Dennesh._ ” _Give it to me. Now._ The boy’s book has been so helpful for learning more of the Seelie tongue. Murdoc knew a few simple commands, like _stop,_ but there’s so much potential when he can tell the boy _anything._ And he has no choice but to obey. Murdoc wishes Angus would obey him willingly, but this is the next best thing.

He can see the fae fighting against his control, anger and fear warring with the blank obedience in his eyes. There’s no need to take over like this, but it seems the boy truly fears his name being used against him, and for more than the fact that it was used in his past to enslave him. There’s some darkness somewhere in his past that he wants to forget, something he’s done while under that control that he’s ashamed of. Murdoc can exploit that. _If he can be convinced that what he’s done in the past is unforgivable, then he will begin to see himself like he already sees me. A monster._

The scrap of blood-stained and dirty white cloth falls into Murdoc’s hand. He closes his fist around it. “ _Nen tammas merren ailo.” Give me the rest as well._

Angus’s hands are shaking as he complies, fighting desperately against the control. There’s an abject humiliation in his eyes, and such a deep-seated fear and dread that Murdoc wonders if it’s not the first time this kind of request has been made of him.

The fae is so pale, and even with dirt and blood smeared on his face and skin there’s so much light still shining through. When he hands Murdoc the rest of his clothing, he’s crying. One crystalline tear breaks free of the name-spell and trickles down his cheek, leaving a glittering trail behind.

Murdoc wipes it away, catching the brilliant drop on his glove. It’s like holding pure light, almost as pleasing as dipping his fingers into the boy’s blood.

Murdoc wants more of this, _so much more, his tears are light and beauty itself_ , but he needs to pace himself, he thinks as he turns his back on the shivering, broken-eyed fae and closes the door. After all, they have forever.


	6. Window+Note

_Jack’s voice is gone. Mac’s right there, just an arm’s length away, but he can’t warn him. And then Murdoc sweeps in between them._

_He’s watching, helpless, while that monster sinks its fangs in Mac’s throat. Jack wants to stake that bastard through the heart, but his hands won’t move, his feet won’t move, he can’t even shout._

_Someone else is screaming. Jack jerks upright._..upright? He runs a hand over his face and sighs. That was a hell of a nightmare. Felt so real.

There’s an awful stale taste in Jack’s mouth. He swallows, hard. _I just need something to take the edge off of this._ But more than that, he needs to reassure himself that Mac’s okay. He stumbles upright. “Hey Mac?” There’s no answer, but the kid is probably out. Mac can sleep like the dead...ugh, that was an awful phrase. He’ll just go check.

There’s a clunking sound near the door, and he freezes, panicking. A vampire shouldn’t be out now, the sun’s above the horizon. Then he sees Bozer wander around the corner.

“Morning, Jack.” Bozer hangs his jacket by the door.

“Hey. How’d it go with Leanna?”

“She had to leave before the food even got there. Something came up in Portland.” Bozer sighs, clumping into the living room. “I just wanna hit the...Oh my God. Jack!!!”

Jack wonders what’s wrong. _Did I get a black eye in that bar fight? Is there blood on my shirt? Did I take my pants off before I laid down?_ But Boze isn’t actually staring at him. He’s looking past him, to the window.

Jack turns and freezes. There, in massive, dripping red letters, a note has been scrawled.

_Borrowed your little fae plaything. Hope you don’t mind. Murdoc._

“No, no, no!” Jack rushes to the door, flings it open, runs into the yard. It’s an hour past sunup. Murdoc must be long gone. He stands there in the yard, dew soaking into his socks, the silence and the absolute peace all around mocking him.

“Jack....is this...blood?” Bozer is still inside, staring shell-shocked at the window. Jack walks back, looks at it, smells it.

It’s Mac’s blood. Jack can tell because Fae blood is more golden-tinted than a normal human’s. He should know by now, he’s seen the kid’s blood way more times than he’s comfortable with. He never, ever wanted to see it like this.

“It’s still fresh, isn’t it? Doesn’t that mean he didn’t do this very long ago?”

“Long enough. Sun’s been up almost an hour.” Jack is already calling Matty. He doesn’t even let her get out a sleepy and frustrated “Dalton…” before he unloads the whole story on her. She can get teams mobilized, have them start searching the city right away.

Bozer’s already calling Riley, and Jack can hear him trying to give her something to work with. “It was between when they got home and when I did, so it could have been any time in two and a half hours. But then there’s sunrise, he didn’t have that long to...I don’t know!” Jack takes the phone because it sounds like Boze might actually start having a panic attack.

Honestly Riley doesn’t sound much better.

“I have nothing, Jack! Nothing!” He can hear her frantically typing. “He avoided any major roads, he didn’t show up on any security feeds.”

“No car?” Jack doesn’t understand any of this. Murdoc barely had time to snatch Mac, let alone make a getaway before dawn. If he doesn’t have a car… “He must be holed up somewhere close. Riley, I need you to track down anything that could block the sun. Abandoned buildings, storage facilities, scrapyards, caves, anything in a five-mile radius of the house.” _There’s no way he got further than that on foot. Mac would have either been unconscious or struggling like a bagged cat. Either way Murdoc wouldn’t be able to move fast._

Riley is silent for what feels like too long, but when she does speak up there’s a note of tense hope. “I’ve got three. A house that’s been boarded up for a decade, a super-sketchy self storage, and an abandoned farm with two barns.” She clicks something else. “Uh, make that two. Those barns are falling apart so bad they’d let in too much light.”

“My money’s on the house. More secluded. What’s the address?” Jack’s already grabbing his shoes and car keys.

Riley takes a deep breath over the phone. “Jack, you can’t go alone. Not against Murdoc. Matty’s getting a team ready now.”

“I’m not gonna wait for that, Riles.” Jack shakes his head when Bozer tries to follow, then gives up, sighing. Of course Boze isn’t going to be content to wait around at the house. And to be honest, maybe it’s a good thing. Depending on what condition they find Mac in, Bozer’s help may be necessary. Especially if Jack has to focus on fending off a murderous vamp.

He drives the whole way to the house breaking every speed limit by at least thirty miles an hour. He doesn’t want Mac in that monster’s hands a minute longer than necessary. The way Murdoc had been starting at him in the Chrysalis...God only knows what he’s going to do to that kid.

Mac’s never said much about what happened to him before the Phoenix, but Jack can guess. Matty'd said he was being forced to fight, possibly even kill (and that in itself would break the kid badly). But the way he used to look at Jack sometimes, the way he looked at everyone at the beginning, said there was something more than even that. The way he flinched whenever Jack touched him, the way he seemed to be always trying to hide, away from anyone's eyes, and then that time he wouldn't let Jack touch him at all even though he was bleeding out.

 _"No, leave me alone!" Mac's eyes were_ _ferally panicked. He shoved Jack's hands away from the hem of his shirt._

_"I'm trying to help you, kid!" Jack was pretty sure Mac was just out of it from pain and blood loss. He probably didn't know Jack wasn't the guy who'd just stabbed him in the ribs._

_"No!" Mac had practically thrown himself away from Jack, clutching at the edges of his shirt. "I-I can take care of it. Please go."_

Jack hadn't left, but he'd noticed Mac wouldn't so much as undo a single button of his shirt until Jack turned his back. At the time, he'd thought it was just the kid's stubborn, I-don't-want-to-admit-anything's-wrong streak. But after everything, he'd decided there was probably a much, much worse reason.

The level of control those hunters had over him, a pretty boy who to top it all off is part fae...Jack, sadly, would be surprised if he’s wrong about Mac’s past. And he’ll be damned if he lets that happen to Mac again. The kid doesn’t deserve it. Any of it.

The house is creepy-quiet when they get there. Still, Jack keeps Boze behind him the whole time he clears it. And clear it they do. Attic to root cellar, the place is clean. There was even dust on most of the floors. The only things that have been here are small vermin animals and apparently some kids who thought this was the cool place to get high and drunk. There are beer cans everywhere, but no blood, and no Mac. Jack slams the door behind them and sits down on the porch, head in his hands, exhausted and out of options. He’s extremely grateful that Bozer sits silently as well.

When the Phoenix team arrives, Matty gives him hell over one of their comms for going alone, _I didn’t go alone, for what it’s worth Matty, I had Bozer,_ and then tells him, sadly, that the other team, at the self-storage, came up dry too.

The trail’s cold. Murdoc and Mac might as well have vanished into thin air.

Mac’s house is swarming with Phoenix hunters when Jack and Boze come back. It seems like forever before they leave. Jack’s only prevented from hurling everything in the room through the defaced window by Riley’s reminder that the evidence might help them find Murdoc. Bozer’s the one to ask the agents, timidly, if it’s okay to clean the window. When he gets an affirmative, he pulls out the cleaning fluid and two pairs of gloves. He hands one set to Jack without a word and they go to work.

Still, even with the window clean, Jack can see those taunting words. _If I hadn’t gone to sleep, if I’d made sure that kid was where he belonged and not running his big brain a mile a minute on some new theory, he’d still be here._

Riley sits down next to him. She reaches for his hand, squeezing it tightly. “We’re going to find him.” She sounds as unsure as Jack feels. “We have to.”

Jack reaches for her hand, and as he does, catches sight of the red butterfly on his wrist cuff. And the beginning of a plan takes shape. Maybe for Phoenix the trail is cold. But the nightlife might know something. Anything. Patty knew next to nothing about Murdoc himself, but she knows people who know people. Jack will grasp at any straw at this point.

“Might as well snatch some sleep while you can, Riles. It’s gonna be a long night.”


	7. Time+Phone

The phone’s ring doesn’t wake Jack. It doesn’t because Jack has been awake for exactly two hours and twelve minutes. He knows because that’s exactly how long his DVD of Die Hard lasts, and he started it the second he finally broke free from his nightmares. He can’t sit alone with his thoughts, seeing Mac bloodied, hurting, frightened, _broken_. Jack sets down his beer, picks up the phone, and answers gruffly. It’s two p.m. Way too early for anything.

It’s Matty. There’s a leap of hope in Jack’s chest. _Maybe they’ve heard something._

“Jack, we need you to come in.” Matty’s voice is tense.

“Mac?”

“I’m sorry.” And that hope falls into shatters. It’s not about him.” Jack is horrified that he’s relieved to hear that. The “I’m sorry” sounded too much like the worst.

Jack knows he doesn’t look even close to presentable when he walks into the War Room. Sleepless nights have left deep black patches below his eyes, he’s sporting a three-day scruff, and there’s no way they won’t be able to smell the alcohol.

But Matty doesn’t berate him the way she would if this were a normal day. She barely even says a thing. “Glad you could join us, Jack.” Boze and Riley are already there. Neither of them look much better. Neither does Matty. She’s holding it together, but Jack knows her well enough to see the pain she’s hiding.

Jack’s seen this look in Matty’s eyes exactly once before. Back when she and Jack and Patty were all junior hunters. Right after they watched Patty get her throat ripped out.

Jack was the one who convinced the Phoenix not to kill Patty when she was turned. He’d said she could be useful. In all honesty, he didn’t want her death on his conscience again. He’s lived with that for fifteen years. He doesn’t know if he can live with losing another partner. Especially not Mac.

It’s been two weeks since Jack last got more than three hours of sleep. He’s turned the city upside down and inside out, burning every bridge, every nightlife connection he has, calling in every old favor. But no one knows a thing. Not even Patty. Jack thought there was a little real concern in her eyes when she told him that. But maybe she was just upset that her rule over LA isn’t as strong as she wants to believe.

Matty gestures to the screen, where there are images of a city street. Jack can see blood on the walls. “There’s been a vampire attack. The victim is alive and in stable condition, but he was attacked in broad daylight. On a street.”

“This is wrong.” Jack mutters. “There hasn’t been a daywalker since…” He trails off, not wanting to remember Cairo too much right now. _I thought nothing could get worse than Cairo. But at least then Mac was with me, and we were facing death together._

“Well, there is one now. Or it’s a human wanna-be. Either way, we need to deal with this fast.” Jack knows what’s coming next. “You’re my best team, and I’m sorry to do this, but Jack, you’re the only one who knows daywalkers.”

Jack nods. The tight feeling in his chest doesn’t dissipate, but Matty’s right. Jack is a hunter. He has a job to do. And Mac would never forgive himself if sitting in a hole over his disappearance was the reason Jack failed to save someone else.

Jack grabs a cup of coffee, a big one, and his tac gear. Riley’s getting her rig ready, and Boze is fussing with his equipment. It seems so normal and so wrong at the same time. Because Mac isn’t there laughing, filling his pockets with paper clips and gum wrappers, laughing with Bozer about some failed invention prototype or trying to convince Riley to permanently reprogram Jack’s ringtone to something other than Metallica. He misses Mac’s hand in the circle as they prepare to move out, the way his fingers always tightened around Jack’s just a few seconds longer than any of the others’.

Matty calls them while they’re en route. There’s another attack. This time the vamp dragged a woman out of a sidewalk cafe. And they’re close.

They park the van in an alley near the cafe, and then follow a thin trail of blood down the street to a small apartment building, which is half-leaning and looks pretty pathetic and unsafe. There’s a larger pool of blood near the Dumpster behind it, and Jack can hear growling.

“Riles, you go around and stop them from getting away to the street. I’ll take the back.” Daywalkers aren’t harmed by the light, but they often avoid direct sunlight out of habit. Jack’s never heard of a daywalker who wasn’t a normal vampire first. But the science behind them has never been found. No one knows what makes a daywalker. Which makes them insanely dangerous, and hard to kill.

Jack readjusts the grip on the whip in his right hand, and the Beretta loaded with a full clip of silver bullets in his lift. The bullets are hollow, filled with powdered aspen. It’s the same wood they use to make the stakes every hunter carries to finish the job. If this were a normal vamp, Jack would use solid silver bullets, give them a chance to do an interrogation since the silver won’t kill them immediately. But he’s not taking chances with a daywalker.

“Jack!” His heart plummets. Riley’s screaming. _If I lose another one of these kids, I’m gonna burn every vamp in this city._

“Riley!” He breaks cover, racing around the corner of the building, praying she’s still alive. _I thought she’d be safer covering that side. She was supposed to be out in the open. Away from danger._

She’s not being bitten, there’s no blood anywhere on her. Just stark horror pasted on her face and glinting in her eyes. Jack stops, and he’s sure that look on her face is now on his.

The vampire standing over the bleeding, unmoving victim is all too familiar. Jack knows that if a thousand years went by he’d never forget that face. The vampire turns and looks directly at him, and Jack chokes back his instinctive shout of, “Mac!”

This doesn't look like Jack's sweet, gentle kid. Those blue eyes are dead and flat and cold now, like ice. They've lost all the warmth and love and curiosity and kindness Jack's come to expect to see there. His normally pale skin only looks whiter because of the blood coating his lips and dripping down his chin. The blood is invisible on the black of his shirt and pants. The color makes him look washed-out, empty.

"He doesn't know us." Riley sounds like someone just knocked her flat on her back with no warning. Jack can hear Boze, who’s watching this on their body cams from the van, sniffling.

“Mac?” Jack whispers uncertainly. If he’s been turned like Patty was, he’s either going to be loyal to his sire or he’s been abandoned as a fledgling. Either way, he’s dangerous. Patty almost killed Jack before Matty took down her sire. Jack hadn’t had the heart to shoot his old partner then, and he’s not sure he could kill Mac now even if the kid was going to tear his throat out. _But what if he goes for Riley?_

Mac bends back down over the victim on the ground, and Jack chambers a bullet. _Don’t make me do this, kid. Please._ If he’s going to drain her dry, Jack’s going to have to shoot him. _Mac would want that. He wouldn’t want anyone’s blood on his hands._

Just then, Mac’s head jerks up like he’s heard something the rest of them are oblivious to. He turns away from them, and the woman stirring faintly on the ground, and scales the wall of the building across the alley from them with shocking speed.

There’s a too-familiar figure in a black trench coat standing at the top.

“Murdoc!” Jack aims, ready to fire, but the vamp pulls Mac in front of him. Jack can’t shoot. He has no clear line of sight, and if he hits Mac...He’s furious and helpless.

Bozer is yelling, on comms. “Matty! Get a full strike team here! Now!”

“They’re on their way. Stall him.” Matty’s crisp order can’t hide the tremor in her voice.

“What have you done to him?” Jack has to keep the vamp talking. “I swear to God, I’m gonna make you pay for this!”

"Oh, don’t you know how this works, Jackie dear?" Murdoc laughs. "He belongs to _me_ now. He will be loyal to me for as long as I allow him to continue to exist." He pulls Mac close to him and Jack shivers at the possessive look in those black eyes. And then nearly vomits when Murdoc tugs Mac’s head to the side and sinks his fangs into the boy’s neck. Mac doesn’t even flinch. Beside him, Jack can hear Riley choking back sobs.

Murdoc turns back to look at them, blood dripping from the tips of his fangs, running in thin trickles down Mac’s neck “I really must thank you for introducing me to this lovely little fae, Jack. He’s so...delightful.” And then the vamp moves with inhuman speed and they’re both gone.

“He hasn’t turned him.” There’s stark relief in Bozer’s voice through the comms.

“How do you know for sure?”

“Because he’s using Mac to…to feed.” Bozer sounds a bit sick, almost as bad as Jack feels. _For vampires, possessing a still-living host is the ultimate form of intimacy._ “And dedicated vamps like Murdoc would never eat blood that hadn’t come directly from a live source. They crave the intensity of life that comes from drinking from a living host.”

“Then why the hell was _he_ drinking blood?” Jack’s only ever heard of fully turned vamps doing that. _What if there’s something about Mac being fae that makes him different?_

“There are…side effects…to being a host. Most often it manifests as slighter cravings, like extremely rare meat, or sometimes any iron-rich foods. But…if the feedings deplete the host’s own supply enough, then they have to replenish it somehow.” Bozer’s voice shudders, and Riley growls, low and dangerous.

“How…how often would a vampire have to feed on a host to get that kind of…depletion?” Jack can hear his own voice, but he feels detached, like he’s not the one talking.

“It would take at least a feeding a day. Likely more.” _Far more than a vampire needs to simply survive._ Jack feels like vomiting. _He’s taking pleasure in this. He’s killing the kid slowly because he’s getting the ultimate high from using him._

“Why wouldn’t he turn him? What does he have to gain?” Riley asks.

Matty sighs, and Jack can hear the pain in her voice over the comms. “Murdoc has already proved he’s sadistic. I’m sure he loves watching his victims’ souls try and regain possession of them, and then just when they think they might succeed, swooping back in.”

“I’m going to stake him through the heart.” Jack snaps, coiling his whip.

“There might be another reason.” Bozer looks up. “You know how you were asking why he could come out in daylight? I think it’s Mac’s blood.”

“What?” Jack can hear Riley’s question overlapping his.

“I read something, years ago, about vampires who could walk in daylight if they drank the blood of people who weren’t fully human. It was a fiction book, but hey, the lines between that and reality get pretty blurry here. And the character was half-angel, not fae, but they’re both creatures of the light, right?”

“It makes sense.” Matty says. “We have no recorded evidence of this, but we’ve seen Murdoc clearly unaffected by daylight. And it would explain how he was able to take Mac so close to sunrise. He knew once he bit him he’d become immune.”

“But he must need to replenish it; the effects must wear off after some time,” Bozer says. “Probably why he’s feeding every day instead of weekly.”

“At least that means Murdoc needs him alive,” Riley says.

“What kind of life is that?” Jack asks, and no one answers him. _He’d probably rather be dead._


	8. Ravens+Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter broke my heart to write.

It’s dark here. And cold. Mac hates it. In the few moments he’s actually himself, at least. Those are getting farther and farther apart.

It used to be easier to remember who he really was. An hour or two would pass after…after Murdoc… _fed_ , _he’s drinking my blood, and he’s savoring every moment of it, and he’s making me like it too,_ and then he’d wake up here, weak and cold and dizzy but _himself._ Now, he doesn’t know what he’s done for whole days. Sometimes there’s blood on his face, and when he wakes up to that he vomits even though there’s usually nothing in his stomach to bring up. _What am I doing? Have I killed people? What is he turning me into?_

In his more coherent moments he’s tried to get out, because even though Murdoc has threatened his family, Mac is so afraid he’s going to kill them himself. They can and will fight Murdoc, but he doesn’t think Jack or Riley or Bozer would have the heart to stake _him_ , even if it came down to his life or theirs. _Murdoc wants my loyalty, and he has to know the only way to get it is to take away my family, my friends._ And Murdoc must know that if _he_ kills them himself, Mac will hate him for the rest of his life. But if he makes _Mac_ kill them...He’ll be a monster then, and then he really will belong with Murdoc. There will be no place left for him to go, and Murdoc will win. _I have to get out, I have to get out before he realizes that’s the only way he can win._

But there isn’t much in the small cell to use, and the minute he’d tried to turn a scrap of his shirt into something he could wedge in the door lock to keep it from closing, Murdoc had swept in and taken it, and the rest of his clothing as well, from him. _He used my name to force me to give it to him, even though he could have just ordered me to, I was in no position to refuse._

It was too much..too much like before. Before Matty and Jack and the Phoenix. _How did he know? I never told anyone...he couldn’t have known. He can’t know._ He’d been humiliated and terrified and he’s never been more relieved in his life than when Murdoc left the room without doing more than stare hungrily at him and wipe a single tear off his cheek with a hand that’s too gentle for the monster he is.

Ever since then, every time Mac’s woken up, he’s been naked. _Murdoc knows my reputation, that’s all. He saw firsthand I’ll use anything I have, so he’s taken it all away from me._ It’s better than thinking about any other reasons… _I would know, wouldn’t I? I’d know…he hasn’t…_ He shivers, from the cold and the thoughts, and pulls his knees to his chest. He never wanted to feel this helpless and broken and worthless ever again, but it doesn’t matter what he wants now. As if it ever did in the first place. It never matters what _Mac_ wants, he should know that by now.

Another time, he tried to pry loose the door hinges (the door is iron, likely to prevent him touching it) with the sharp edges of a loose stone, but his unsteady hands betrayed him and the stone slashed into his palm. Murdoc was there again in moments. He didn’t even scold, just took Mac’s hand sickeningly gently and then lapped slowly, delicately at the blood spilling from the wounds until the vampiric saliva closed them, never breaking eye contact with Mac the entire time. Mac was sick again after Murdoc left that day.

Mac doesn’t know how Murdoc knows what’s happening inside his cell; maybe the ravens who perch outside the door, in the dim hallway, are his spies. They chatter and scold constantly, and the sound drums at his head and makes hours and days and weeks blur together.

He has no idea how long he’s been here. Long enough for his skin to turn almost as pale as Murdoc’s, for the iron chains Murdoc never lets him leave the cell without to form raw, painful sores on his wrists and ankles, long enough for the air to become cooler and make sleeping on the icy stone floor a near impossibility, long enough for him to wonder if anyone is going to come for him. _Maybe they don’t want me anymore. I’m broken now. I’m becoming the thing I’m supposed to kill._ He’s no good to anyone if he can’t do his job. Maybe the others have figured that out too.

The walls around him are covered with faint marks. Some are scratched in with the shards of broken stone he was able to find on the floor during the first few weeks. There are many different things, in fairly steady handwriting, on the wall across from the tiny strip of light coming through the door, where they’re easier to read. He wrote more then, when he still thought he might get out. When he was reminding himself who he was. He touches his chin and his fingers come away stained with crackling dried blood. _I’m not that person anymore. What am I?_ He traces the words, wishing they were still true.

_I work for the Phoenix. I help stop vampires that go rogue. My mother was a fae, and I am too. Riley is the closest thing I have to a sister. And Bozer knows too much about vampires. He knew it even before he found out I helped hunt them. Jack never leaves anyone behind. He’s a good hunter and he likes his whip better than any other weapon. Jack is coming to get me._

Farther along the wall, the writing becomes messier, more desperate. The stone shards, and Mac’s mind, got duller and duller as the weeks continued to pass.

_I’m not a vampire. I haven’t been turned. My family is coming to find me. They promised. Jack doesn’t leave me behind. He’s my friend._

The last few are messily, shakily scrawled in large letters near the door, in blood. Mac doesn’t know if it’s his own or someone else’s.

_Jack will come. Jack always comes._

He wishes he still believed that.

The door opens, and Mac hates the way he flinches away instinctively. But he’s finding it harder and harder, and more and more pointless, to deny the fear and repulsion.

Murdoc crouches in front of him, one finger trailing down Mac’s arm. Mac shivers at the icy, faint touch, and then he can’t _stop_ shivering, the touch and the room’s damp chill raising gooseflesh all down his arms.

“Are you cold, pet?” Murdoc whispers, sounding almost concerned. He removes his coat and drapes it over Mac’s shoulders. Vampires have no body heat, still the small amount of warmth the coat offers is tempting. Mac can see his own breath in the room’s air, with the light coming through the doorway. But he pulls the coat off and tosses it aside.

“Leave me alone,” Mac whispers, curling away. He knows it’s futile and he’s probably only going to make this worse, but he can’t help it. _Stay away from me. Don’t touch me. Stop tormenting me._

“But lovely things were made to be admired, don’t you know that?” Murdoc rests a hand on Mac’s knee, and then lifts one of his hands, the one with the still-healing cut. “I believe it will scar, but then, are not the most beautiful things in the world the ones that possess some slight imperfections?” He begins to trace some of the older scars as well, and Mac feels sick. The vampire’s fingers brush over the gash on Mac’s chest from the fight that made Nikki, one of his former hunting partners, decide to quit the game. They caress the burn on his right shoulder where one of his own traps left its mark, the discolored gash on his leg when he cut himself with his own knife to get blood to lure out a vampire queen. “And you, my precious little pet, are a wonderfully damaged masterpiece.”

Mac continues to shake, huddling into himself, curling up as tight as he can for both warmth and protection. He’s at this monster’s mercy, and he’s incapable of helping himself.

He’s always had something he can do, something he can use. But now, Murdoc has stripped even that away from him. Being trapped, unable to escape because there is nothing left in this room for him to use, and he’s never truly alone to try and find a way out, is more vulnerable and terrifying than the simple fact that he’s naked. The loss of his knife is as much if not more frightening than the loss of his clothing, and Murdoc has planned for any potential use of the room’s materials themselves.

Mac is good at what he does, and what he does is use whatever he has at hand. But now he has nothing. Murdoc hasn’t just taken away his dignity, or his humanity (because being fae, it’s debatable if he ever could in fact claim to be human), he’s taken what makes Mac… _Mac._

Murdoc tilts Mac’s head up with one hand, forcing Mac to look into his cold, black eyes. With the other hand, he brushes the tangled, messy hair away from Mac’s face, gently. “I don’t like to see you suffer, my poor sweet thing. But you insist on making it necessary.” He pulls back, speaking almost like he’s scolding a child. “If you wouldn’t use what I could give you to try to escape, you could have anything you wanted.”

“Why haven’t you just turned me already? Because it’s the only way you’re going to stop me from wanting to never see you or this place again,” Mac spits, anger edging at his fear. He just wants this to be over.

“Because, then you would cease to be _you,_ and it simply isn’t a victory.” Murdoc sighs. “You’re an intelligent boy, I thought you would have understood already. Perhaps I overestimated you. No, what I want is not a slave I created. I want you to follow me willingly, because you grow to see that you need me. You can make all of this end. Just say the word, and you never have to come back to this dark, cold, awful place again.” Mac shivers convulsively. _When was the last time I was warm? When was the last time I saw sunlight?_

“N-no.” It’s barely loud enough to be heard, but Murdoc pulls back nonetheless.

“If that is what you want, then.” He stands up, shrugging slightly. “No matter. I have forever to wait. Do you?” He turns away and walks out.

Mac waits until the door is closed, even though he knows it’s futile because Murdoc sees everything that happens anyway, before he buries his face in his hands and sobs.


	9. Lantern+Tree

There’s a new face in the war room when Jack walks in this evening.  _ Two and a half months. _ That’s how long it’s been since he’s last seen Mac here. He hates that this is starting to feel like the new normal. And the only way he realizes this feels normal is that the new arrival is so jarring. 

“Jack, Riley, Bozer, I’d like to introduce Samantha Cage.” The young woman is standing half-facing Matty. Jack can only see the back of her olive jacket and a clipped-back ponytail of straight ash blond hair. 

“I’ve been sent to attach to your team from the Sydney agency.” Her voice carries a soft Aussie accent as she swings to take in the room. “They’d heard you might be needing someone with my skill set.” Her eyes meet Jack’s, and he stops right where he’s standing.

Samantha Cage is fae. Jack’s been around one long enough to know one, the eyes give her away. “Matty? What the hell is this? Why is one of them here?”

“Jack…”

“He’s not dead, and he’s not turned, Matty!” Jack can’t believe this. Two months and they’re replacing Mac. Just like that. With someone who can’t even begin to understand what things are like here.

Jack can’t take another minute of it. He ignores Matty’s demands for him to come back and stalks out the door.  _ She can fire me now for all I care. I don’t want to work there without Mac. Especially not if they’re bringing someone else in and giving up on him.  _ He doesn’t stop until he’s outside the doors, in the courtyard. The sky has gone almost completely dark, but many of the lights in the offices aren’t on yet. It’s still a few minutes to nine. The only real illumination in the courtyard is the massive oak that serves as a memorial to the fallen hunters of the Phoenix.

Jack sits down under the Fire Tree. Above him, lanterns bob, swaying softly in the breeze, the phoenix medals hung beside them clinking softly against the lanterns’ wires. Brightness streams out from the tree across his face, across the pavement laid with the repeating design of a phoenix in the mosaic of stones. Every lantern hanging there is for a hunter this agency has lost. Jack thinks there must be dozens, maybe hundreds. Many of them are names Jack knows too well. Good people he’s watched die. Some are the names of legends.

He always sits in this same place, under a lantern tarnished with fifteen years of hanging outdoors in all weather. The first he placed here. Patty’s lantern has a single red ribbon tying the phoenix medal to the handle; the mark of a hunter who’s been turned. A black ribbon denotes a true death.

He stands up and gazes into the lantern’s flame, thinking of the words the hunters all repeat each time another fire is added.  _ For those who have died, for those who yet live, and for those who come after, we will burn. We will not let the light go out, and we honor those who have kept the fire with their lives.  _

Jack knows the reason the lights are blurring is the tears in his eyes. He has his own vow, one he’s made for the past five years, ever since that little fae kid with the too-old eyes and destructive tendencies walked into his life.

_ I failed you, Patty. But I’m not going to let him down. I’m not gonna hang another lantern on this tree.  _ He adds, sadly,  _ I’m going to find Mac and I’m going to bring him home.  _

“Who was it?” The voice startles him, so totally unfamiliar. Well, not exactly unfamiliar...that accent can have only one owner. The last person he wants to talk to right now. Cage.

“You’ve got some nerve, asking a question like that.” To her credit, Cage doesn’t flinch.

“You think because I’m here it means they’ve given up. That I’m here to be Angus’s-” 

“Mac. He’s Mac.” Jack’s not entirely sure if the fae can control one another, but the fact that Cage knows Mac’s real name and doesn’t even know  _ him _ makes Jack angry.

“-Mac’s replacement.” She glances at him and once again he’s looking into wide, bright eyes that are too old for the face they’re in. Eyes that look like they hold all the secrets and joys and sorrows of the world at once. 

“Why else would you be here?”

“Because I can help you get him back.” Cage shifts her feet, staring at the ground. “I’m...well, not to brag, but I’ve become an expert on the vampire pysche.”

“Well, this guy’s totally off his rocker; he’s not your garden variety weirdo.”

“If he was, you wouldn’t need me.” Cage has the same quiet confidence as Mac always did...does. Mac’s still alive. They’re going to find him. With this new girl’s help.

“What is it you do, exactly?”

“Outsmart them. Figure out a vampire’s likely moves, then put my team ahead of them. Take them down before they get a chance to strike. Or in this case, make your cold trail warm again.”

Jack sighs. “If you can do that, it’ll be a damn miracle.”

“Well, I like to say I keep some magic up my sleeve.” She smiles a little. 

“We could use all we can get.” Jack rests a hand on the tree trunk, feeling suddenly tired.  _ I shouldn’t have gone off on everyone like _ _that_. _I just can't stop thinking about Mac, and I'm giving everyone else hell for my mistake._  

Cage looks at the tree. “Who planted this?”

“I don’t know. It was here when I came.” From the looks of it, it’s at least a few decades old.

“This is from fae culture. These Memorial Trees grow in every one of our gathering places, to remind us of those who are no longer present in the colony.” She reaches into the tree, fingering the ribbons, light reflecting off her pale hair and making Jack think too much of Mac. “The hunters use this tradition now, but it began with us.” 

Jack watches her study the lanterns and medallions. “You’re about the only person besides my team who hasn’t told me to just hang a lantern for Mac already.”

“I think you should.”

“What?” She just said she wasn’t here to replace Mac, that she’s planning on helping them continue the search. Why does she want him to give up?

“In fae culture, white ribbons mark those who have left for a time, fae who are gone on journeys or disappeared. I hung my own in my home colony’s memorial tree five days ago. It will burn until I return or until they replace the color of the ribbon with red or black.”

It’s not hard to find a medal and a lantern. Sadly, they’re commonly needed. It is a bit harder to find a white ribbon. Cage donates part of the sleeve of her blouse when the storage room search is a bust.

Jack calls Riley and Bozer and Matty outside, and together, they place the lantern on one of the lower boughs. The white ribbon flickers in the flame’s glow, the phoenix medallion looking almost alive, burning, moving.

Jack thinks the flame looks like a promise. Hope. The phoenix rising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone get the reference I made here?


	10. History+Translations

Cage doesn’t waste anyone’s time. She barely stays at the Fire Tree five minutes after hanging the lantern for Mac before she’s leading them back inside.

“The most interesting part of your case to me,” she says, scanning the documents on the War Room screen, “is that MacGyver is being kept to help Murdoc remain a lightwalker...you call them daywalkers here, right?”

“Do you think this is how all daywalkers originate?” Bozer asks. “No one’s ever found conclusive evidence of what makes them, and this is the first case in years.”

“It is. Fae have known that for years, or at least the fae whose families retained the ancient knowledge. But that’s not what I mean. I don’t understand Murdoc’s rationale for wanting to become a daywalker..”

“Why?” Riley asks. “If something as common as sunlight could kill me, you can bet I’d be first in line for whatever could make me immune. We do that all the time with vaccines.”

“Vampires have adapted to the kind of life they live, now that they for the most part coexist with humans. They prefer nights. The light is blinding to them, they have no interest in being near it. And now that the wars have mostly ended, there’s no real tactical advantage to be sought. I might think Murdoc was raising a daywalker army, but there’s no sign anyone other than him is using your agent as a blood source. And he’s not even hunting during the day. Every daywalker report you’ve had come in describes your agent as the one attacking people for their blood.”

Jack flinches, starts to stand, but Matty’s hand keeps him still. Cage continues.

“He seems to have no purpose to this other than to prove a point. To himself, to someone else, I have no idea.”

“Maybe he’s making a demonstration? To somehow market it?” Bozer asks. “Like, maybe he wants to set up shop and sell fae blood to anyone who will pay to become a daywalker? Maybe he isn’t going to let them in on the secret that they could do this themselves if they found a fae of their own?”

“Bozer…” Matty scolds softly. He stops talking.

Cage speaks up again. “It used to be a well-known fact that fae blood made a vampire immune to sunlight. But they could never drink the blood of a pure fae, or they would die from the overpowering life and light in it. They needed half-bloods, where the fae line was diluted. When we discovered it, the laws about intermarriage with humans began. And for generations, the only marriages between humans and fae were illegal and secret.” Cage sighs. “That’s when the humans began to hate us. They thought we were conceited and arrogant, and above mixing with humanity. And all we were trying to do was protect them from the daywalkers.” There’s soft bitterness in her voice, and Jack feels a stab of guilt.  _ Those are the ideas I was taught to believe. And did, until Mac came along. _

Cage continues. “But after the Great Dark War, there were too few fae left alive to continue that policy. So we began to mix with the humans once again. We had hoped that because so much time had gone by, and the humans had invented explanations for our actions that hid the truth, that vampires would have forgotten the way daywalkers were made.”

“What does this mean? Did Murdoc get his hands on old lore?” Bozer asks. Then his face goes white. “Or he’s so old he remembers.”

“But the killings we can trace to him didn’t start until recently,” Riley says. “Unless he’s significantly changed his patterns every decade, he’s only been killing for five years, maximum.”

“He’s smart. Maybe that’s exactly what he’s doing,” Matty says. “Riley, pull any unsolved vamp kills from the past...three hundred years. Look for clusters.”

Riley goes to work, the little frown on her face she gets when she’s deeply involved in a project getting more and more noticeable. Then she stops, puts a hand to her mouth, and hands the computer to Matty without a word. 

Matty throws the image onto the War Room’s main screen, and there’s a collective gasp. Clusters of red dots are scattered around the world, each with a date next to them.  _ Paris. September-November 1995. Kyoto. July 1986. Hamburg area. March-June 1944. New York City. January 1880. Bombay. October 1845. London. February-August 1810. Edinburgh. July 1790. Amsterdam. May 1745. Chinese coastline November 1703. General area of Alsace. March 1687. _ And there are so many more. 

Matty studies the small notations near each cluster. “Each time, the particulars change. Sometimes he attacks only women, sometimes only men. Sometimes it’s a dusk kill, sometimes dawn. Sometimes he turns victims, sometimes outright kills.” 

“Then where’s the pattern?” Jack asks. 

“The last victim is always fae-blooded.” Riley takes the computer back and clicks a few more keys, pulling up papers that range from clean, modern dossiers to handwritten scribble in languages Jack doesn’t know. “The reason these weren’t all connected a long time ago is that different countries call their fae different things, or don’t have a name for them at all. The Chinese record said killings stopped after a “light carrier” was taken. The French called them “ _ lutin _ ”. These killings all ended “mysteriously” because we didn’t know what stopped them. But because Murdoc hasn’t killed since he took Mac, I decided to take a long shot and made the computer connect anything that could remotely refer to fae. And...this.”

Cage studies the clusters, the corners of her eyes crinkling the way Mac’s do when he’s got some half-baked idea. “He hunts until he tracks down a fae, either by luck or because they’re trying to stop him, then uses them for their blood. But he doesn’t generally kill as a daywalker, which is unusual.”

“And he hunts again when he...when he’s used up the last fae he’s taken.” Jack feels the sick feeling in his stomach growing. Murdoc is going to drain Mac’s life away one drop of blood at a time. The kid will get weaker and weaker until what’s being done to him kills him. And then Murdoc will move on and the whole thing will repeat itself. He can’t let Mac become just another dossier on a list of cities and dates. 

“We’re going to find him, and we’re going to end this.” Jack turns to the door when Matty’s phone pings. She picks it up, and then her face goes white.

“There’s been a daywalker killing.”

“Oh hell no.” Jack sits down hard. “No, he wouldn’t.”

Matty shakes her head. “It wasn't Mac. Whoever did this didn’t just kill the victim. He turned her. Only a full vampire can do that, not a still-living host.” Jack gives a sigh of relief, then feels a bit guilty. Someone is dead, turned, and all he can think about is that Mac isn’t the one who did it. 

“It must be Murdoc.” Cage speaks up, hesitantly.

“He doesn’t kill after he’s found a fae.” Bozer shakes his head, but the fear in his eyes can’t be hidden. 

“Well, it looks like he just broke his pattern.” Matty throws the photos onto the main screen, a young woman clawing her way out of a grave, smeared in blood and dirt. Jack thinks there’s something familiar about the young woman, something about that long blond hair. “Her name was Nicole Carpenter. Used to be an agent here.” Jack barely recognizes the girl under the blood. She was the first addition to his and Mac’s team. She hadn’t lasted long; after a particularly bad tangle that landed her in the infirmary for a month, she’d quit the Phoenix. Last Jack heard she’d been working in the city for a tech firm.

Jack had no great love for the girl; when that last op went bad she’d left them more or less hung out to dry, but Mac had always had a soft spot for her. He’s always felt guilty about her getting hurt on that op, even though he’d been just as badly injured and there was nothing he could have done for her. This is going to crush him.

“So do we know where she was when she was...bitten?” Maybe if Nikki found Mac, they can too. Jack ignores the little voice in his head saying,  _ and maybe you’ll end up just like her. _

Riley sifts through the images on screen. “She disappeared from the parking structure outside her job and there’s no trace of her alive after that. But we do know where she was after she died. He buried her in a cemetery a few miles outside town. Security cams caught her rising.”

“And him?”

“Nowhere. He left her. She’s out there somewhere, an unbound fledgling.” Matty sighs. “We’ll send a team to look for her.”

Jack sighs. There’s only one reason Murdoc would single out Nikki, break his pattern like this. “He’s still trying to break Mac. The kid must be giving him one hell of a fight, and somehow Murdoc knows all the right pressure points.” Jack’s so proud of Mac for how strong he must be. But he can’t help thinking this might be the last push. Mac’s always been so willing to do anything to protect others. If Murdoc has killed because of him, it might be enough to force him over the edge.  _ When we find him, are there even going to be any pieces left to pick up, or is the Mac I knew gone forever? _


	11. Death+Breaking

There’s a routine to the days now. Mac knows when he wakes up, Murdoc will come, talk to him for a time, and when Mac refuses to give in, he’ll leave. Then he’ll come back later, drag Mac upstairs to drink his blood, and then there’ll be the same indeterminate period of blankness before he wakes up in his cell again. 

So when Murdoc turns in the opposite direction from the room he usually feeds in, this time, Mac knows something is wrong. He knows better than to ask any questions.

Murdoc pushes open the door of a small, dimly lit room. Inside is a body, on the floor. Mac gasps, stumbling backward. She’s covered in blood, her face white, eyes closed, but he knows Nikki Carpenter too well to tell himself this isn’t her. 

Mac cringes into a corner, whimpering, biting his knuckles until the blood comes. Nikki’s sightless eyes stare blankly at the ceiling, the puncture wounds in her neck crimson. 

“What did you do?” He can’t stop himself now.

“The question, Angus, is what did  _ you _ do?”

“No!”  _ I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I don’t kill, I don’t! _

“Look at her neck. Those aren’t my fang marks. Too small, too broad. You know the difference between a host’s fangs and true vampire ones; you’re a smart boy.”

Mac does know. Every hunter knows that difference. And he can’t be sure without the proper tools, but it looks like Murdoc is right. “No, no, I wouldn’t.”

“But you did. You hadn’t fed in too long; it was too dangerous to let you out. The hunters were getting too close, learning our tricks, and we couldn’t risk being caught.” Mac remembers that.  _ So hungry, curled up in the cell, I couldn’t move, I needed blood and Murdoc was taking too much… _ He isn’t weak and hungry anymore, which means he’s fed, and his fang marks are on Nikki’s neck. Murdoc isn’t lying. 

“So I thought I would bring your food to you. I chose carefully, after all, I can’t have you drinking just any random human’s blood. It might make you sick, and I can’t have that. Apparently I miscalculated how much blood you needed. You should have seen the look in her eyes when she saw you. She kept screaming your name, trying to make you see…”

“No, no, no!” Mac digs his fingernails into his arms, blood spilling over his hands. He’s taken her blood, it’s inside him, he killed her for it and he wants it  _ out. _

“It was your instinct, nothing more. You needed to feed. And she was your prey.”

“She was my friend!” 

“She was what you needed to survive. This is who you are now. Putting yourself through this pain is pointless, pet. Once you accept what you are, and that I am your only friend now, it can all be over." Murdoc places an icy hand on his bleeding arm, and Mac shivers violently as the chill spreads through his whole body.  _ Don’t touch me. Get away from me.  _ “Those hunters you cared so much for, they would kill you now. You are no longer one of them. You belong with me.”

“No, I don’t!” Mac tries to shout, but his voice is shaking and broken. It’s a pathetic echo of what should be confidence.  _ I do belong here. I’m a killer.  _

“I’ll leave you to think on that.” Murdoc stands up. “In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, something must be done about her. Before anyone starts looking.” He lifts Nikki’s body effortlessly and walks away.

Mac huddles against the wall, staring at the blood-stained floor. The last time he was forced to kill, with the agency before Phoenix, it was the same. He’d watched himself stake that vampire boy in the heart, even though the vampire had done nothing, nothing at all. And then his whole team had only laughed when he was sick and then locked himself away in his room the rest of the night. He’d thought about killing himself then, so they couldn’t use him for something like this again.  _ Maybe I should have. _ He can’t now. Murdoc will just turn him, and then who knows how many people he will kill?  _ There’s no way out. I can’t live and I can’t die. _

When Murdoc comes back there’s dirt on his boots and gloves. “Well, that’s finished,” He mutters as he crouches next to Mac, dusting off his hands.

“What did you do?” Mac whispers, even though he already knows.

“Brought her back. You should thank me, you know. It seems you were fond of her.”

“You turned her?” Mac tugs at the chains, ignoring the iron biting into the open, raw sores. 

“I did indeed. She’ll be a lovely child of the night. And I’ve freed her as well; not that I had the time to spend training a fledgling, but still. She’s free to start over.”

“Nikki would rather have died.” Mac growls, tugging away from Murdoc’s grip. He doesn’t get far. Murdoc sinks his fangs into Mac’s neck and then everything goes dark.

When he’s aware of where he is again, there’s a breeze blowing. This is wrong. Murdoc never lets him out when he’s himself. Only when he’s lost in the haze of having his blood sucked from him, of Murdoc controlling him with his name.

He blinks, because even though it’s dark, the starlight is more than he’s used to and it’s almost blinding. There’s bright light below him too. He recognizes it. The Fire Tree. They’re standing on a roof almost directly beside the Phoenix building. He can feel Murdoc beside him, gripping his arm, hand cold even through the thin cloth of his shirt. It takes him a moment to realize that the scuff of cloth against his skin feels strange; this isn’t how he usually comes back to awareness. The black shirt is stiff around the collar and down the chest. He’s afraid he knows why.  

There are voices coming from the courtyard. Mac recognizes small snatches of the words. It’s a lantern ceremony. Then it sinks in.  _ Nikki _ . Even hunters who have left or retired are honored for their former service, and this time especially makes sense because Nikki was turned. 

“I wanted you to see this,” Murdoc says, almost casually. Mac should be there. He should be helping hang Nikki’s lantern, she was his partner. His friend. And instead it’s only Jack, reaching up into the tree, hanging the flickering flame that will burn until the world ends or the hunters are no longer needed and die out.

“Where do you think yours is?” Murdoc asks, softly, but his voice is ice. 

_ There should be one. They should have stopped looking by now.  _

“I’ll tell you,” Murdoc says, the whisper chillier than a winter wind. “There is none. They honor the humans who fell, not creatures they barely trust any more than they do those they hunt down.” His fingers dig into Mac’s shoulder. “To them, you do not deserve to be remembered. You were only a tool. A pawn.”

Mac can feel tears flooding, burning, down his cheeks.  _ No, I wasn’t. I was family. Wasn’t I? _ He remembers Bozer trying to teach him to cook, he remembers showing Riley how to coax a family of fox kits out of their den, sharing beers and old action movies with Jack, matty scolding him when he took risks and then hugging him. He remembers laughing together, working together, fighting together.

“They never wanted you to see that they never trusted you. That you were a monster to them.”  _ Jack shouting at Mac after they almost died in Cairo. Matty making it clear that he was going to have to give her and Jack his real name if he wanted a job at the Phoenix. Riley staring when he unleashed a flurry of pigeons that had been roosting nearby on a pack of vamps chasing them. Bozer running out of the house, during the first week they lived together, when one of the tree branches opened the fridge for him.  _

Mac hears Jack’s voice as he hands the spent firebrand to Nikki’s mother, who is standing stoically, tears streaming down her cheeks. “We’ll hunt down the monster that did this and I swear I’ll stake him through the heart.” And Mac crumples to the roof in uncontrollable sobs. 

He doesn’t know how he ends up back at Murdoc’s lair. He wakes up as usual, alone, naked, and shivering in his cell. The room feels colder than ever, the moisture from what must be rain outside seeping through the walls and puddling on the floor. He can’t find a single dry place to lie down, and the water is icy. The cold is crawling into his bones, freezing him. Soon he’ll be as cold as Murdoc is... 

He can’t stop shaking, and just that movement is exhausting. He can’t even find the strength to push himself upright. Tears are dripping off his nose and chin, leaving little ripples in the dark puddles. The slight warmth of them running down his face, and over his hands when he wipes them away, is the only comfort Mac has. 

When the door opens, he doesn’t even have the energy to cringe.

Murdoc walks in, and he’s carrying something over his arm. Mac instinctively turns away when Murdoc reaches for him, only to feel something startlingly soft around his shoulders. Murdoc has laid a blanket over him. 

“I’m sorry, little pet. I’m sorry that everyone you think you can trust abandons you.” Murdoc helps him sit up and drapes the blanket around Mac gently. He wants to push it away, he shouldn’t take anything Murdoc gives him, but he’s  _ so cold _ . He clutches the soft, slightly warm cloth around himself almost instinctively, too beaten and exhausted to care if this is weakness. “I promise you, I will never let go of you. I want to keep you with me forever.” He crouches down, brushes Mac’s wet hair away from his face. “I want to give you everything you deserve.”

“All you’ve done is hurt me.” But Mac can’t make the words come with any conviction. _ All anyone ever does is hurt me. And sometimes I trust them anyway. _

“No, you’ve hurt yourself. Would I have had to use your name if you had followed me willingly? Would I have needed to chain you if you didn’t try to escape? Would I have taken your clothing if you hadn’t used it for whatever plan you had?” Mac shakes his head, slowly. Murdoc is right. This was his fault. If he’d done as he was told he wouldn’t be here. He could be warm and safe, not frightened and freezing and covered with sores from the iron.

“All I want to do is give you the life you should have. And yet you insist on fighting me.”

Mac wants to keep fighting. But that’s what got Nikki killed. And no matter how badly he wants to stay strong, he can’t be responsible for anyone else’s death. “Please, promise me, no one else dies.”

Murdoc looks directly into his eyes, the black irises piercing. “I swear to you on my grave, if that’s what you want, Angus, then for you, I’ll do it. No more death. And I won’t touch those people you call family.”

“I’m ready to come with you.” It hurts, he should never, never say that. Hunters are supposed to die before they give in. But what if the next person in that death room is Riley? Or Bozer? Or Matty? Or Jack?

“Finally, you’ll be reasonable.” Murdoc smiles and hands him a stack of clothes. “Now that I know you won’t try to get away and run back to those hunter friends of yours, you may have these.” 

Mac dresses shakily, guiltily. It’s just as humiliating to take the clothes Murdoc has given him as it is to be constantly naked. He doesn’t feel any less degraded as he follows Murdoc up the stairs, his ears feeling hollow without the constant clank of the chains. 

They’re in the main room, up in the catwalks. Mac’s not used to the light. It’s too high off the ground, he’s going to fall. Murdoc moves with practiced grace, and Mac follows stumblingly, holding onto anything he can. The ground is so far away.

“I think you’ll love my little nest. It’s not fancy, but you’ve always struck me as preferring function to form.” Murdoc turns back. “Oh, we’ll make a marvelous partnership.” Mac shudders.

Now he hopes Jack’s given up. He hopes they never find him, never see what he’s become. Because if they come to rescue him, they’ll be coming for a friend. _ And all they’re going to find here are monsters. _


	12. Car+Cage

Jack hasn’t slept for almost thirty-five hours. Matty told him to go home, after Nikki’s lantern ceremony, but he couldn’t. They haven’t even found her yet, let alone Mac, even though Nikki’s been leaving them a pretty clear trail of clues. Fledgling attacks, especially ones who have been left to themselves, are always messy. 

If Murdoc’s broken Mac by now, according to Riley’s intel, they won’t see a thing of him until he surfaces a decade or two later, having taken more than Mac can give, and starts looking for his next fae host.  Jack can only hope the kid’s still holding on.  _ Come on, Mac, I’m gonna get you back. Is there anything you can do to help me find you? _ He doubts it, or the kid would have figured it out already and they’d have him back.

That does narrow down their options a bit. Wherever Mac is, he must not have any access to the outside world. No windows, not even electrical conduit or drainpipes. Which suggests an older building, or something specially constructed. They’ve already ruled out bank vaults and any old fallout shelters, but Jack’s posed the option of saferooms in private houses. If some paranoid millionaire built something like that, and the place is abandoned now, that could be it. But the thing about those kind of places is that generally, no one is supposed to know they exist. 

Cage has been trying to find a pattern to the attacks that have been reported. Jack tried to tell her Riley’d already run every algorithm in her computer on them and found no connecting factors, but Cage had shut him down. 

“There’s no substitute for the human...or fae eye.” 

She’s been sitting at a desk for hours, drawing lines on printouts of city maps, pinning strings to the walls, sorting through the data. But she’s had no luck either. 

When Jack comes to bring her a green tea with sugar (she can’t stand so much as the smell of coffee), she stands up, wincing and rubbing her back, staring out the window at the rain streaming down the glass.

“There’s nothing here. They’re totally random. All over the city. I can’t even find a central hub he could be working from.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Well, we have two options. We either wait and hope he strikes again, and hope we get there in time, which is unlikely given that we have no way to predict a pattern of movement for these, or we get proactive.”

“Meaning?”

“He likes fae, right? Let’s give him a two for one deal.”

It takes a minute for Jack to process, but when he does, he’s not about to go for this plan. “Cage, I can’t let you be the bait. You saw what he did to Nikki.” Jack can’t get the sight of her mangled corpse, crawling out of a fresh grave, out of his head.

“Yes, well, I’m not Nikki.” Cage’s eyes have gone cold steel. “I’ll go to the parking garage, as an investigation. Hopefully I draw his interest. When he shows up, I’ll get that tracker your tech’s been working on onto him.”

“And what then? If he realizes you’re baiting him, he’ll get suspicious.”

“I’ll figure that out when we get there.”  _ Ah hell, is this flying by the seat of your pants planning just a normal fae trait? _

There’s no guarantee this will work. But as much as Jack hates this plan, it hands down beats just sitting around hoping Murdoc decides to kill someone else to get Mac to cooperate. Because if Nikki wasn’t enough, Jack’s pretty sure Murdoc’s next move up the ladder will be one of the team. He’d rather be at least a bit in control of the situation. And he thinks Riley and Boze would like to be able to go home. Everyone’s been inside the Phoenix since they found out about Nikki, just in case. And now they’re all here, in the van, with Jack and Cage.

Cage adjusts her comm, then slips Bozer’s tracking device launcher into her sleeve. She doesn’t have to get too close to Murdoc for it to work. 

“So how do we know he’s gonna come, again?” Jack asks.

“Let’s call it a gut feeling. Your team hasn’t been here yet. Given his past behavior, I think he’s going to want to see your faces when you come to see. So he’ll be watching the place.” Cage steps out of the van. They’re almost three blocks away now, Jack’s not sure it’s enough but if they go any farther Cage will be out of sight. And they can’t leave her on just comms. Not with Murdoc.

She walks down the street, a purposeful snap in her step, eyes following every movement, street level and above. Jack can see her casually checking the roofs. When she gets to the door, she stops, bends down next to a trash can that site techs found Nikki’s purse and phone in. She examines it minutely.

She walks inside, just a short way, where she’s still in view. Bends over again, checking the floors now. Jack can hear his own tense, ragged breathing.  _ Any time now, creepy. Any time… _

Cage stands up, then something behind her, further inside, gets her attention. She turns around, and then Jack sees part of a shadow detach itself and move forward.  _ Murdoc. _

“Well, well. This is...certainly fascinating. Don’t tell me, they brought you because you’re a vamp expert and they thought you’d be able to find me.”

“Well, aren’t we clever.” Cage shrugs. “Guilty as charged. But if you knew who I was, why show yourself?”

“Oh, you know so much, little fae, and so little. You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I know enough.” She’s moving slightly, folding her arms across her chest, getting her wrist in a position to plant the tracker. “You only hunt humans until you find a fae, live off their blood until you drain them dry, and move on. For the past four hundred years.”

“So...shallow. You sound like you met me on a dating profile. Doesn’t it irk you, that I live for the light, rather than avoid it? That I break all your rules? That I’m such an...enigma?” He keeps moving too, staying just out of a direct line of her arm.  _ Does he know? _ “You’ve studied all your life, and yet you can’t begin to understand me.”

“So enlighten me.” Cage is keeping her voice light, but Jack can hear the strain. Murdoc’s starting to get to her.

“Ah, I’d love to, you know, but I’m sure you’re not here alone. And I’d much prefer that only you get to know me. My hopes, my dreams, my philosophies. It would all go over that brute Dalton’s head, I’m sure he’s listening to everything, isn’t he? Doesn’t like to let his people out of his sight. Pity he wasn’t so careful with Angus.” Jack freezes.  _ Murdoc knows his name. Oh God, what has he done? _

“What makes you think anyone else is here?” Cage smiles, just a little. “I came to get to know you better. Unlike most of my colleagues, I don't find vampires repulsive or frightening. You’re right, you do fascinate me. There’s so much to learn from you.” She relaxes her body slightly, Jack sees her arm fall a little. 

“So clever. Mixing the truth and lies. You do want to know what makes me tick. But that isn’t the reason you came.” Before she can move away, he grabs her wrist, clutches it tight.  _ Oh shit. He’s made her.  _  “Oh Samin.  _ Perin anneel. _ ”  _ Don’t move.  _ Cage stiffens, even from this far away Jack can see it.  _ How does he know her name? Any of their names? How?  _ Murdoc pulls the comm from her ear, holding it delicately in one one hand. Jack can hear the scritch on his leather glove.  “ _ Hanile kemmish imo tikosh smeelee kendar merule _ .” 

“What did he just tell her?” Jack shouts. He knows the basic commands in Seelie, like  _ stop _ or  _ don’t move _ , but not much more than that. 

Riley types in the words and then gasps in shock. “I suggest you walk into the path of a car as soon as possible.”

“Shit!” Jack bolts out of the van, running toward the street corner. He sees the dark shape slink away, the pale one turn purposefully and stride out into oncoming traffic. Horns blare. One car misses her. Another swerves, hitting a street lamp. Jack’s almost there…

A blue plumber’s van is carrying too much momentum to stop. Jack hears the horn, the squeal, the crunch, the thud. And then he’s there, leaning over the body, afraid to touch anything. 

Cage is sprawled in the middle of the street, one arm tucked awkwardly under her body, her hair stained red near her temple, the blood pool beneath her head growing. But her chest is rising and falling, and when Jack presses his fingers to her neck there’s a pulse.

“Oh geez man, I didn’t mean to hit her. She was just standing there. Did you call the cops?” A young man is getting out of the van, running over. “She musta been on drugs or somethin’. She just stood there.”

“Yeah, she was. She’s my sister,” Jack mutters. “Family black sheep.”

Cage stirs, whispering something. There’s a crowd gathering. Jack shouts, “I called 911!” hoping to avoid having the cops show up before Bozer’s call to the Phoenix brings their medical team. 

“Hey, hey, don’t move. You mighta messed up your back.” She shakes her head. 

“I took the hit on my shoulder and leg. I’ll live.” She’s pale and trembling, eyes wide and spooked, like a startled deer. 

“I’m so sorry, Cage. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I never should have let you go in there like that. No backup.”

Cage wearily lifts a hand, places it on Jack’s. “I didn’t fail. I placed your tracker, and I got rid of the rest before he caught me. Kept his attention on my comm, not my arm.”

“She’s right.” Jack hears Riley on his com. “I’ve got eyes on our vamp. He’s heading south. Fast.”

Cage lies back against the pavement. “The medics are on their way. I’ll be fine.”  _ Apparently sacrificing your own safety to help other people is a common fae trait. Or maybe it’s a hunter thing.  _ “Go get MacGyver back.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoyed writing the battle of the wits between these two...


	13. Loyalty+Friends

It’s a warehouse. Jack’s surprised; the place doesn’t seem like anything Mac couldn’t get out of with his eyes closed. Which means if he hasn’t figured out a way out, it’s because he’s too injured or too carefully confined. Either one is an awful thought.

Jack almost sneezes at the strong smell of garlic coming from the scent grenades tucked in his fang-proof vest. They’re useful...ish. Usually they gas a room so badly that both the vamps and the hunters end up incapacitated. But with Murdoc, they’re packing all the gear they could get.

“When we go in, we’re going to have to be fast. I know he’s a daywalker, so the lights won’t be as effective, but use ‘em anyway. Might disorient him.” Jack’s carrying one of the sunlight-simulating flashlights. They can’t kill a vamp, but they can sure make them hurt, and pretty effectively blind them. Jack tries not to think about the fact that those were one of the first things Mac invented for the Phoenix tac teams when he came.

“Three, two, one, go!” Jack slams his full weight against the door. It gives, and he stumbles just a little as he plunges through the door. Boze and Riley are right behind him, along with three other Phoenix hunters. Lights are flashing in all directions, and Jack has to avoid getting one in the face.

The room looks empty, at first. And then Jack looks up. On a tall catwalk, staring down at them, is Murdoc. With Mac right beside him. The kid looks awful. Pale and shaky, and he’s staring down at the hunters almost like he’s afraid of them.

“Well, well. So Jack Dalton isn’t quite as idiotic as I thought.” Murdoc chuckles.

Jack hears one of the tac team readying his gun. “Stand down, man. You could hit our guy.”

“Or he could…” The hunter’s voice cuts off in a shriek, as a swarm of black birds pours from the rafters, surrounding everyone. Jack sees a blur of pale skin and shadows, and then the other hunters hit the ground as well, dragged off shouting.

Jack is still beating the ravens desperately away from his eyes, _knew I shouldn’t have ever watched that damn Hitchcock movie,_ when abruptly the onslaught stops. Murdoc whistles shrilly, and the birds swirl back up to settle around the vamp, two perched on his shoulders.

Jack looks around. It’s just him, Riles, and Boze left. And none of them have their weapons anymore. Murdoc must have snatched them in the chaos. Jack feels his ear, where he can tell there are several bleeding scratches. No comms either. The birds must have taken them.

“What did you do to my men?” Jack shouts.

“Oh, nothing, just got them out of the way so we could have a nice private chat. Don’t worry, they’re still very much alive.”

“Come down here, you bastard, and fight like a man!” Jack wants to get his attention off Mac. The kid’s petrified; he’s so scared of heights and now he’s almost twenty feet off the ground.

Murdoc slides down the girder, his coat furling out around him dramatically. Mac follows, more clumsily. If it weren’t a matter of life and death, Jack would laugh at how many times his normally highly coordinated partner nearly falls.

“It seems I underestimated your resourcefulness. The little fae girl was a nice touch. Tell me, did you send her family’s colony a black ribbon?”

“Actually, she’s very much alive, no thanks to you,” Jack snaps back. He makes a move forward, and Murdoc nods ever so slightly. The ravens lean forward, staring, one at Bozer, one at Riley. Jack stops moving.

“Oh, this just gets better and better!” Murdoc stalks closer, planting each foot deliberately. “These fae never stop surprising me. So much stronger than I ever would have thought.”

“You have no idea.” Jack’s watching Mac. He’s just standing there, head hanging. Jack doesn’t think he’s out of it the way he was when they found him drinking blood in that alley, but he’s not looking at them. Something’s wrong.

“Still, they have their weak points. Don’t they, _Angus_?” Murdoc turns, and Jack sees Mac go rigid. “Oh yes, I know his name. I know all their names. It’s not so hard when you have the right people on your side, you know.”

Murdoc waves his hand languidly. “ _Rekesh niklio_ .” _Kill them all_ . Jack freezes, for just a moment. _Oh hell no. Don’t make him do this._ And then Jack stumbles backward with his best friend’s hands around his throat.

Riley grabs for Mac’s arm, but the kid’s blank eyes are determined. He slams an elbow into her chest and she falls back, gasping. Bozer tries to grab him from behind and Mac slams his head into the tech’s nose hard enough to draw blood. Jack hears Murdoc inhale hungrily.

“Oh, yes,” The vamp whispers. “This is even better than I imagined.”

Jack manages to hook a foot behind one of Mac’s and throw the kid off balance. On a good day, this would never work, but the way Mac was struggling to get down that girder tells Jack he’s tired and wobbly. He goes down hard on his back, and Jack lands on top of him, pinning his arms to the floor by the wrists. Mac’s whispering something; Jack has to lean closer to catch it. He hopes the kid doesn’t try to bite his ear off.

"Jack. Kill me, _please_." There's a flicker of the real Mac in those eyes. "There's no other way."

"There's _always_  another way. Aren't you always telling me that, Mac?" Jack can feel the tears coming. He struggles, pinning Mac to the ground is taking all his strength, because the kid’s fighting with every bit of strength left in his half-starved body. If Mac was healthy, Jack’s pretty sure he’d be getting his ass kicked. As much as he hates to admit it, Mac’s beaten him in training quite a few times.

“Do it before I hurt you!” Mac’s practically foaming at the mouth, fighting Murdoc’s control over him so hard. But already Jack, who’s been awake far too long and isn’t at the top of his game either, is tiring.

Riley’s lying on the floor, breath rattling and holding what’s likely broken ribs. Bozer’s trying to stop the blood and look anywhere but the vamp hungrily licking his lips. Jack can feel the pressure of the only weapon the ravens and Murdoc missed, his backup aspen stake, pressing against his chest under his vest.

Jack doesn’t want to do this. But if he doesn’t, he’s going to have to kill Mac. And that will kill him. “Angus.” Jack’s sure he’s going to butcher the Seelie tongue, but he has to try. “ _Sheshla_ .” _Stop._

And Mac does, his whole body rigid. It’s such a shock Jack almost falls. Murdoc moves just a bit closer, eyes glittering in the darkness. Jack ignores him and turns back to Mac.

“ _Aeelee emen._ ” _Come back to me._ “Please, Mac.”

“Jack?” It’s the faintest whisper, but Jack feels like sobbing anyway. He pulls Mac up, holding him tightly. He has him back.

A slow clapping drags him back to reality. Murdoc is smiling, fangs bared. “So impressive. But I don’t need him to kill you when I can do it myself.” He lunges for Riley, who shrieks, scrabbling backward on the floor. Jack lets go of Mac and grabs for Murdoc’s coat, but he’s just a little too late…

A black and crimson blur slams into Murdoc, throwing him halfway across the room. Jack is knocked backward by a second shadow, then four or five more enter. The first one pins Murdoc’s arms behind him, then turns to Jack.

“Since you did such a spectacularly terrible job of handling my little rogue vampire problem, Jack, I’ve had to come take care of it myself, just like I thought.” Patty. Jack finds himself laughing almost hysterically in relief. “You still need me to save your ass, even after all these years?”

The vampires surround the fallen enemy, hissing and snarling at Murdoc. Patty wraps a strip of cloth around his mouth, cutting off the beginnings of a whistle. The ravens ruffle their feathers and stay silent.

Riley’s standing now, half bent over but on her feet. Bozer’s holding the sleeve of his coat to his nose and looking a bit paranoid at the amount of vamps in the room. Probably afraid they’re going to jump him for the blood scent. He’s still relatively new to the field, still jumpy.

“How...how did you know it would work? That you were stronger than him?” Riley’s still shaking as she sits down next to Mac and Jack.

“I didn’t. Took a risk.” Mac’s shuddering, whether it’s shivers (his skin is ice cold, far too cold for Jack’s liking) or crying, Jack can’t tell. He holds Mac tight, resting his cheek against Mac’s damp hair. “I got you, kid. I got you.”

He tries not to let the guilt get too strong.  _I did what I had to do to save his life._

“I’m so sorry, Mac. I promised I’d never do that to you.” Jack pulls Mac a little closer. “I told you I was never ever gonna use your name to make you do anything.”

Mac takes a deep, shuddering breath. And then Jack hears the welcome sounds of vehicle engines. Their backup is on its way.


	14. Home+Hands

Jack has spent far too much time in Phoenix medical. Some of it for himself, but that’s never the worst. The worst is when he’s here like he is now. Here for Mac. 

The kid’s curled up in a hospital bed, looking small and fragile and pale. Not quite as white as the pillow he’s laying on, but damn close. The medical staff have been treating him for near-hypovolemic shock since they got him in; according to what they can determine, Murdoc was failing to supply Mac with enough blood to replenish him after feedings. On top of that, he’s malnourished, hypothermic, and there are deep sores on his arms and legs, a result of the powerful allergic reaction fae-bloodeds have to iron. He was chained up, and the thought makes Jack want to go upstairs and through the holding room guards and tear Murdoc apart. 

Because Murdoc is in custody, but Nikki is still out there. Somewhere. No one’s heard anything tonight. She’s likely left town, and probably will leave a swath of destruction behind her. If this was any other situation, Matty’d have Jack and his team after her. But Jack can’t leave now. 

The kid shivers and whimpers in his sleep. Jack knows better than to lay a hand on him in this state, but he talks softly, hoping Mac wakes up. Jack himself has dozed a few times, while they were stabilizing Mac and wouldn’t let him in the room, but he still feels bone-deep exhausted. He won’t be able to sleep, really sleep, until he sees for himself that Mac is okay. 

Mac wakes up gasping and shuddering. His hands tangle in the blankets and he flinches and pulls back, shoving the cloth away from him, fumbling at the loose hospital gown. “No, I don’t want…I won’t…I said I wouldn’t join you!”

He stops shaking and blinks rapidly, eyes squinted against the fluorescent glare of the medical ward. He stares at his hands, at the blanket, like he’s surprised.  _ Like he’s surprised to wake up warm…or somewhere there’s light… _ Mac’s fingers fumble with the edges of the hospital gown again, and then he clutches the material around himself in a death grip, arms crossed over his chest like he’s planning on personally fighting anyone who tries to take it from him. “Geez, kid, you’ve never been one to get attached to those things; you always said they were ugly…” And then the realization strikes Jack and he nearly has to run out of the room to puke.  _ He’s not used to waking up with clothes. What has that bastard done to him? _

“Mac?” The kid turns, and then practically throws himself at Jack. He sobs into Jack’s shoulder, thin body shaking so hard Jack’s afraid the kid will fall apart right there in his arms if he doesn’t hold him tight. 

Matty shakes him awake hours later. “They need you back at the scene. You were the senior hunter there, it’s just protocol. I’m sorry.” She helps him disentangle Mac from where the kid had his hands fisted in Jack’s shirt. “I’ll stay with him until you get back.” She takes the chair, rubbing circles on the back of Mac’s hand with her thumb.

When the site eval team shows Jack the room where Mac was, he has to swallow awfully hard to keep from crying. Murdoc literally dug a network of tunnels into the bedrock below the warehouse, and made a single cell, with an iron door the only way in and out. The floor is covered in water - no wonder Mac was so cold when they found him and that Jack thought his hair felt damp. They found iron chains with blood dried on them hanging outside. Jack thinks of the sores on his partner’s wrists and ankles. But the worst is the walls in the cell. 

Mac had carved dozens of words and phrases into the rocks.

_ I work for the Phoenix. I help stop vampires that go rogue. My mother was a fae, and I am too. Riley is the closest thing I have to a sister. And Bozer knows too much about vampires. He knew it even before he found out I helped hunt them. Jack never leaves anyone behind. He’s a good hunter and he likes his whip better than any other weapon. Jack is coming to get me. I’m not a vampire. I haven’t been turned. My family is coming to find me. They promised. Jack doesn’t leave me behind. He’s my friend.  _

Close to the door, there are two more sentences, not carved but written in flaking, dried blood.

_ Jack will come. Jack always comes. _ When he sees that, the tears can’t be held back any longer. 

Matty’s interrogating Murdoc. Jack knew better than to even ask for that job. Very likely he’d lose it before they got any intel whatever. He doesn’t know how Matty’s doing this. Every morning, when she comes down to the infirmary, she looks wrung out.

Whatever she learns only makes everything worse. Murdoc has no qualms about telling them, in detail, every cruelty he’s inflicted on Mac. Jack knows he’s only hearing them watered down through Matty’s short briefings, and he can’t imagine what it’s like for her to have to sit across the table from that monster and listen to him describe what he’s done. 

Jack doesn’t miss the days Matty seems to fixate on one part of Mac’s injuries more. Like the day she changes the bandages on his healing wrists herself. Or the day she sits and runs her fingers over the new scar on his right palm when he’s asleep. Or the day she sees him shivering and pulls every blanket off an empty bed and puts them over him. 

When Matty comes down and tells him all this, Jack goes for a walk around the medical wing. He can’t look at Mac for a while after he hears those stories.  _ It’s my fault that happened. I was supposed to watch his back and I screwed up. _

Often, on those walks, he finds himself stopping by Samantha Cage’s bed, and she’s a good listener. Jack’s pretty sure she’s secretly psychoanalysing him, but he doesn’t care. Cage is recovering decently well. She’s out of her bed now, for short amounts of time, but it’s hell on her leg. She’ll have some lasting reminders of her face-off with Murdoc, but she’ll be okay.

Mac, on the other hand, isn’t talking. He cries and screams in his sleep, or when he’s waking up from a nightmare, but when he’s actually awake and aware of where he is, he says nothing. And the worst thing is that he’s avoiding Jack. Jack knows why, too.  _ I used his name to bring him back, after I promised him he’d never, ever have to hear me say it again. And after everything Murdoc’s done to him with that, no wonder he doesn’t trust me _ . 

Jack just can’t take it anymore. The next time Mac wakes up, reaches for Jack, and then curls away, like he’s forcing himself not to seek out the older man, Jack grabs his shoulders and looks the kid in the eyes.

“Mac? Mac, I swear, I’m so sorry I had to use your name. I never wanted to force you to do anything. I know how much that must hurt, and I get it if you don’t trust me now. But I never, ever, would do that again unless it was your life or death in the balance. I’m so, so sorry. I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise.”

“But I could hurt you.” Mac’s voice is rough and broken.

“What are you talkin’ about? Those little bitty fangs you got ain’t gonna do anything to Jack Dalton.” Medical is fairly certain Mac will carry those host fangs for the rest of his life. Jack wants to knock out every one of Murdoc’s own teeth for leaving the kid with this horrible reminder of what happened. 

“I gave up, Jack, I gave up.” He whimpers. “I didn’t think you were coming. I gave up.” He’s shaking again, sobbing and gasping. “I’m sorry, Jack, I’m sorry, I wasn’t strong enough.”

“Oh Mac.” Jack is crying too, holding Mac gently. “I’m so, so sorry.”  _ He thought I abandoned him too. He thought no one was ever going to come. _ “No one could have been stronger.”

“I didn’t trust you.” Mac’s voice is a wail of self-loathing. “I let him win. I let him make me think you hated me. I believed him, Jack, I’m sorry!”

“No, no, Mac, I’m sorry. I’m sorry it took me so long to find you. I should have gotten you out of there weeks ago.”  _ I should never have let him take you in the first place. This is all on me. Maybe you’re right to have thought I’m no good, that I’m going to fail you. _

“You said I was a monster.” Mac chokes out the words, whimpering. 

Jack freezes, totally shell-shocked. Not even when he first met the kid and thought he was annoying and stuck-up did he ever, ever call Mac a monster. “God, no, Mac! I never said that!”

Mac’s voice shakes, shatters. “You told Nikki’s mom you’d kill the monster that turned her.”

“I...how...you were there?” Jack can’t believe this. 

“I heard you. It was me. I killed her. I’m the monster.” Mac turns away from Jack, burying his face in the pillows. “Don’t touch me. You were right.”

Jack reaches for him and pulls him back, gently, because the kid’s so thin and fragile Jack’s afraid he might break him. “Listen. It wasn’t your fault. Patty wasn’t mine, and Nikki wasn’t yours.”

“You didn’t  _ bite  _ Patty.” Mac would sound like a whiny teenager if there wasn’t such a hollow hopelessness in his voice. 

“No, but I might as well have. I got distracted. Let her get separated from me, and she paid for it with her soul. And that’s a hard thing to live with, but she knew what she was signing on for, and so did Nikki. We all know.”

“I killed her.” Mac’s voice is almost lost in his sobbing. “It was my fang marks on her neck. I bled her dry. I didn’t know, I needed to...to feed, and I didn’t know what was happening…”

Jack wraps his arms around Mac, holding him close, brushing the kid’s hair out of his eyes. For some reason that seems to make Mac flinch even more, so he stops. “We don’t know that. He could have killed her and told you you did.”

“It was my fangs.  _ I  _ did it.” Mac shoves his hands against Jack’s chest, but the movement is weak and useless. “I killed her, and you should have killed me.”

Jack’s so ready to walk into that interrogation room and strangle Murdoc with his whip until the vamp admits the truth. Whether Murdoc killed Nikki himself or somehow forced Mac to, it wasn’t the kid’s fault, and Jack just wants to give him some closure. “Mac. Oh Mac. You’re not a monster. What he did to you...It’s his fault, not yours.” 

Mac nods, just a little. A very little. And Jack holds him even tighter.


	15. Life+Light

The world comes back to Mac in bits and pieces. There’s shouting, and Jack says his name, or at least he thinks it’s Jack. Someone’s holding him. And then someone’s pulling him away, and people are shouting about blood loss and hypothermia.  _ Could have told you that, stop poking me. _ And then he’s drifting again.

The next time he wakes up, he’s lying on something that’s oddly both soft and stiff. There are very few things that feel like that. He knows what this is, it just isn’t coming to him. There’s odd noises and he’s strangely warm, and there’s so much light. It’s burning through his eyelids.

_ I gave up. I let him make me work with him. _ With the realization come so many other ones. He isn’t cold because he’s not in the cell anymore. He’s laying on a bed. And he has clothes. He suddenly feels guilty and sick. He let Murdoc break him, and now he really is nothing more than that vampire’s pet. He wonders if it’s too late to say he doesn’t want to anymore. He shoves the blankets off him, claws at the clothing. “No! I don’t want…I won’t...”

Then the world shifts again, and he recognizes the greenish walls, the beige curtains. Phoenix medical. He’s back. Where’s Murdoc? He wouldn’t let Mac go, not this easy. He’s going to come back, he’s going to take him back there. Mac belongs to him now, he said he would stay, and Murdoc owns him. 

He clutches the cloth to him, almost snarling at the hand coming toward him.  _ Leave me alone, don’t touch me! _ He’s fully aware of how pitiful he must look, clinging desperately to the flimsy fabric of a hospital gown, but it’s all the protection he has from those icy hands and dead eyes.  _ Don’t take it away from me, please. I don’t want to be looked at like that again. Please, please don’t make me do this again. _ But Murdoc knows his name, he can make Mac do anything he wants...

“Geez, kid, you’ve never been one to get attached to those things; you always said they were ugly…Mac?” It’s Jack. Jack won’t let Murdoc take him away. He reaches out blindly, and feels Jack’s solid warmth, and holds on tight.

The days blur into one another. He’s sick from the cold and the dampness, and everything’s hazy. The others come, and Jack is there so often. But they shouldn’t be, he’s broken. He doesn’t deserve to be a hunter anymore. He broke the rules, and he let Murdoc break him. He’s no good anymore. They should have left him in that cell. 

He doesn’t want to talk about it but Jack...Jack thinks it’s his own fault Mac is ruined. He thinks it’s because he used Mac’s name to pull him out of there that Mac is afraid to be near him. It did hurt, and there’s a tiny part of him that  _ is _ afraid, because he loves Jack and trusts him but what if something happens and Jack doesn’t care about him anymore? But now he trusts Jack so much more than he trusts himself.  _ Jack’s never killed someone who didn’t deserve it _ . And finally the whole truth comes spilling out. “I gave up.” Mac’s ashamed of himself. He let himself be broken, the one thing any hunter can never do.

Even Jack knows that, even if he won’t admit it. He said so himself. At the lantern ceremony.

“You said I was a monster.” 

Mac shudders, pulls away. Jack knows. He’s just being too kind to Mac to say so. Jack tries to say he doesn’t mean it, that Nikki’s death wasn’t Mac’s fault, but Mac knows better. 

“It was my fangs.  _ I  _ did it.” Mac shoves his hands against Jack’s chest, Jack should stay away, because Mac is going to get him hurt. He’s dangerous now. “I killed her, and you should have killed me.” And then he starts crying and he can’t stop. 

“It wasn’t your fault.” Jack holds him until he’s cried as much as he can. He’s shaking, and he can hardly breathe. Why isn’t Jack letting go? Mac’s no better than any of the other killers they’ve hunted together. 

“Why? Why are you staying?”

Jack’s eyes are full of heartbreak. “Because I can’t seem to get it through that overcrowded brain of yours that we’re family. And family don’t give up on each other.” Mac sniffles and reaches for Jack’s hand.

The door opens softly and Matty walks in. Her eyes are as sad as Jack’s, but she’s trying to put on a smile. “You still awake, Blondie?”

“Uh-huh.” Mac makes a rather non-committal nod. He doesn’t want to go back to the dreams of cold and dark and blood. He doesn’t want to see Jack and Riley and Matty and Bozer dead in that room, their eyes blank and glassy.

“You need to sleep.”

“I can’t.” Mac doesn’t tell her the rest because it sounds crazy.  _ What if I wake up and this was all just a dream and I’m back in that room? _

“Mac, you have to sleep. Or you’ll never get any better.” Matty sits down, and rubs her hand over his back. He looks at her, just a little, and she must see the tears. “Jack, what happened? Did you say something to him?”

“Matty, I swear, I didn’t do anything. He’s pretty messed up.” Mac leans back against the pillows. Jack is right. He’s wrong and broken and ruined. And there’s no coming back. 

His exhausted mind wanders, and suddenly there’s icy water sliding down his back, and cold stone under his legs, and a raven screeching in the dark. Murdoc is leaning toward him, with those wild dead eyes, mouth open, fangs dripping...  _ No, no, no, NO! _

He doesn’t realize he’s screaming until one of the medics rushes in. Matty shoes the man out, going so far as to get up and bodily push him out of the room. “Go, go, we’ll take care of this!”

“Mac, Mac, hey buddy, you’re okay.” Jack hugs Mac tight, but as close as he is, it feels like he’s so far away. Jack is a real person, warm and solid and human. Mac is just a vampire’s host, a shadow, a ghost. Someone’s property. He’s never been anything else, and he was a fool to think he was. 

“You’re safe.” Matty is sitting on the bed beside him, and she has one arm around his shoulder, gently rubbing his back. “Just breathe, okay?” He does. Or at least he tries.

“Mac, you have to tell me what’s wrong.” He didn’t see Riley and Bozer come in, but now Riley is sitting on the end of the bed, watching him. “Please. We all want you back.”

“No! No, you don’t!” He shakes his head. “I’m broken. I’m no good anymore. I killed Nikki, and I gave up. I can’t be a hunter anymore.”

“Mac, no one thinks that but you.” Matty turns his head toward her so he can’t look away from her eyes. “I decide who is capable of being a hunter, and I have never met anyone better than you. Sorry, Jack.”

“No offense taken, ‘cause she’s right, kid.” Jack shakes his head. “I don’t know anyone who could last almost three months with a monster like that and still be anything close to what you are.”

“But…”

Riley and Bozer cut him off simultaneously. “No way, Mac.”

Bozer hugs him. “We love you, and we’d never ever stop, no matter what.”

“Mac, I don’t know what happened to you, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing anyone else does to you, or even the things they might make you do, get to define you.” Riley’s eyes are shining with tears. “Jack told me that, when I was almost ready to let the shit in my past drag me under. I almost ended up in prison for the rest of my life because I thought I was worthless. And I was wrong. And you’re wrong now.”

Mac wants to believe them. But they’re all humans, so it’s different for them. They don’t understand that he’s dangerous. Murdoc could control him, anyone who knows his real name could do it too. He still dreams that they didn’t ever get him back, that he killed them all and then woke up in a pool of their blood, with Murdoc laughing overhead.  

He reaches for Matty’s hand, trying to make her understand. She might get it, she’s less emotional; she sees the big picture. “I  _ can’t  _ keep being a hunter. It’s too dangerous. What if someone else gets my name and turns me against my own team? What if Jack can’t make me stop next time?”

“Buddy, the only way I’m not gonna be able to get through to you is if someone cares about you more than I do, and I got news for you, that ain’t ever gonna happen.” Jack says quietly. 

“You have to do whatever you need to to stay safe. To keep them safe.” Mac nods to the others.

“I do whatever I have to do to keep  _ you _ safe too, man. You got that?”

Mac shivers, rubbing his shoulders through the sleeves of the hospital gown. The cloth is too thin. He doesn’t feel any warmer than he did lying naked in that room. He feels just as vulnerable and exposed too. Now they all know how afraid he is, how broken he is. Maybe they don’t care, but he does. 

“I’ll be back.” Bozer stands up. “Matty, Riley? I could use some help.” Jack stays, holding Mac close, rubbing his arms to keep him warm, singing kind of terribly. But Mac doesn’t mind, because when Jack is this close, no nightmares can get to him. 

The door swings open again, and he flinches, but it’s only his family. Matty and Riley are each carrying a stack of soft, colorful blankets. Mac recognizes them, his mother knitted every single one while she was stuck wasting away in the hospital. She said the colors made her feel happy again.

Bozer’s carrying an old Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt that Jack keeps leaving at Mac’s house, hanging on the coat hook. He pulls it over Mac’s head. “I know you’re not the biggest fan of sports, but it was the comfiest thing I could find.”

The sleeves cover Mac’s hands and the hood falls into his eyes, but the sweatshirt is warm and soft with age and it smells like  _ Jack _ , not like laundry soap and antiseptic. 

Matty and Jack pull the colorful blankets over and around him, and Jack slides in under them, one arm around Mac’s back, the other reaching over to hold his hand. 

Riley takes the hand Jack isn’t holding. Bozer sits down in the chair by the bed, a hand on Mac’s arm. Matty rests her head on his shoulder. Jack holds him tight. And finally, Mac can close his eyes and not be afraid of what will come in the darkness. Nothing can hurt him because his friends are there, and they’ll fight off the monsters that hide in the shadows.

Mac is finally warm, finally safe, finally home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, epilogue time...


	16. Tongue Depressors+Oriole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is. The end, after this story totally took over itself and got so much longer than I expected. 
> 
> But I actually had a few more ideas for other stories in this universe while working on THIS one, so stay tuned...

Jack has never been a patient man, but he thinks, after all this, he might be forced to become one.

It takes time. A lot of time. The truly awful thing is that the vampire's addiction to the host is matched, however unwillingly, by the host's addiction to the vampire saliva. It's like a drug, and getting free of its clutches is just as painful. Most of Jack’s t-shirts now have tear stains on the left shoulder from nights when Mac barely sleeps, tormented by nightmares and the excruciating pain of the withdrawals. He’s free of Murdoc’s clutches, but some part of him will never be able to escape the darkness.

Jack really doesn't have the same person back. There's a shadow hovering under the surface of those bright blue eyes. The saddest thing is that Jack has seen exactly this before, when Mac first came from the other agency. Except the last time, he ignored it. This time, it’s crushing him.

Every day, it’s the same. As much as Jack wants to lie to himself, he knows Mac was partly right. He is broken. Not completely, but Jack’s beginning to wonder if the cracks are beyond repair. Physically, Mac’s getting better, but he’s not getting up, not making any effort to get back to a normal life. He seems trapped in his own head somehow, even after all they’ve done to try and make him see they still care.

Jack finally gets his chance at interrogating Murdoc. They’ve forced him to wait until everyone else has extracted all the actionable intel they can. They know Jack may not leave him in any condition to talk, and Matty doesn’t even give him a warning before he goes inside the room. Jack can see the same anger in her eyes he knows is in his own.

Cage gave him plenty of tips. He gets what he needs, and on the whole it’s a relief. Murdoc finally admits that Nikki didn’t die only because of Mac, even though he did feed on her. She went near comatose from blood loss (and would probably have eventually died anyway, but that’s beside the point) but Murdoc was the one who finished her off.

Jack’s grateful. If it had been any other way, he wouldn’t have told Mac. The kid couldn’t have lived with that kind of guilt.

If Jack thought listening to Murdoc's descriptions of the things he's done to Mac through Matty's words was awful, being here, sitting across from this psychopath, listening to him rub his cruelty in Jack's face, is a thousand times worse. Jack’s fought the urge to either be sick or drive a stake in this bastard ten times over.

“You know, he cried for you. The first few weeks? Cried in his sleep like a little lost child. All I heard was, ‘Jack, help me, please, come get me, get me out, please.’ He was so afraid.” Murdoc spits the words out between clots of blood and chips of tooth.

“Well, he’s not lost anymore. And you’re gonna be sorry you did anything to make him so desperate.” Jack swings another fist.

Murdoc laughs, a horrible cackling sound that echoes in the room. “Oh, I didn’t break him. Little Angus was already broken. I just made it visible. A little masterpiece, isn’t he, all those jagged edges and torn pieces?”

“Let’s see if you think your face is a masterpiece when I’m through.” Jack’s ready to unleash hell on this creature. Matty said to leave him...well, alive is generous, considering....but she never said how alive he had to be.

“Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t seen it. Don’t tell me it wasn’t what drew you to him too. You see, you and I aren’t that different, Jack. Both of us want the best for that beautiful broken boy. But you try and bury everything that’s hurt him. I want him to face it and grow stronger.”

“Mac is the strongest person I’ve ever met.” Jack slams another fist into the vamp’s cheek. “Let’s see about you.”

He can’t deny, though, that the words do shake him. _What is Mac to me? Just a rescue? Like some stray dog I saw in the rain and felt bad for?_ What does he feel for the kid? Pity, friendship, love? What?

When he walks back into Mac’s room, he’s surprised to find someone already there. Everyone else has gone home to sleep; it’s past noon now. But he recognizes that blond hair.

“I didn’t come before because...well, you didn’t know me and I didn’t want to frighten you,” Cage is saying, sitting in the chair near the bed, one hand on the blanket over Mac’s hand. “But they said you’re getting better. I’m glad.”

“Thank you. They told me what you did...to get me out.” Mac glances at her, and Jack sees the guilt in his eyes when he sees the sling and cast. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

“I’ll live.” She smiles a little. “I know it’s hard right now. I...I’ve never had my name used against me before, and I’ll be honest, it scared the hell out of me. I don’t think I even want anyone to call me Samantha or Sammy anymore. Not that most people ever did. I’ve had nightmares ever since. And I...I came because I can hear yours and I thought you might want to talk to someone who could understand.”

Jack would be hurt if he didn’t know she was right. As much as he adores the kid, Jack will never be fae, _and thank God for that because they have no sense of self preservation_. Mac needs his own kind right now.

“Your friend’s back, so I’m going to leave. But you know, if you ever want to talk, I’m just on the other side of that curtain.” She stands up slowly, favoring her casted leg, with plaster reaching to her hip. A cracked femur and broken tibia are nothing to sneeze at. Cage’s good hand is holding a cane to help her balance. She’s still got a long road to recovery, but she’ll get there. Jack’s not sure he can say the same for the pale, quiet boy in the bed.

When Cage comes past Jack, she pulls him aside, just a little.

“He needs to get out of here.”

“He’s still too weak.”

“No, that’s because he’s trapped here.” She meets Jack’s eyes sharply. “Fae need a connection to the natural world. I’m okay because it’s only been two weeks for me. He’s spent three months without enough real sunlight, fresh air, anything he needs.”

“So what am I supposed to do, break him out?”

“If you want your MacGyver back, then yes.” She winks. “I think I can help with that.”

Jack has never had much patience for med techs who are bigoted about the fae, but today it works in his favor. When Cage pretends to totally lose it and starts magically animating tongue depressors, because as she put it _“The wood is the only thing around here that hasn’t totally had the life processed out of it”,_ Jack has all the distraction he needs to slip Mac out unseen.

The kid doesn’t really seem to grasp what’s going on, and he’s struggling.

Jack grips Mac’s hand tightly. “Just getting you outta here. I know how much you hate medical.” Mac does seem to calm down when they get in Jack’s car. Maybe it’s the familiarity, maybe it’s the overpowering garlic. Jack has been doubling up the dosage for weeks now. No sense taking any chances.

He’s hoping this was the right decision, that the kid doesn’t get a chill or that something awful doesn’t happen. But Cage was right. Right now Mac needs fresh air and real grass and dirt under him and sunlight more than he needs that overpowering smell of hospital cleanser, more needles, and fluorescent lights.

They drive until all the houses are long gone, and Jack stops the car on the side of the road where trees tower over them and turn the sunlight green. He helps Mac out, then gets the kid into something more substantial than the hospital gown he had. Mac tugs at the sleeves of his shirt, and Jack can’t help but notice how now one of Mac’s _own_ shirts is almost as loose on him as _Jack’s_ clothes used to be.

They make their way deeper into the woods, Mac leaning on Jack’s shoulder. “You better hope there’s no bears, buddy. Cause if I get eaten helping you out, I’m gonna come back and haunt your garage.”

“Jack, there’s no such thing as ghosts.” Mac laughs, weakly, but it’s something.

“How do you know, man? We’ve seen a lot of weird stuff. We fight vampires for a living. Ghosts could definitely be real.” This feels right. Like the way things used to be.

They stop in a clearing, partly because Jack has a rock in his shoe, has for the last hundred yards and it’s killing him, and partly because Mac looks spent. Jack lets go for a minute when he bends over to deal with his shoe, half afraid the kid’s gonna face-plant into the moss, but he doesn’t. Mac’s still too pale, and he’s swaying slightly, hand resting on an aspen trunk to hold him upright. But he’s standing.

Jack’s about to suggest they start heading back, since Mac is starting to shake and looks awfully tired, when it happens.

A small orange bird leaps off a nearby branch and swoops over Jack’s head. He ducks, still remembering those damn ravens. But the bird has no interest in him. It’s headed straight for Mac.

The oriole perches delicately on Mac’s fingers, warbling softly and nudging its beak against his hand. It wobbles a bit as Mac’s hand begins to shake, but it doesn’t fly away. Jack looks at the kid’s face and realizes Mac is sobbing, tears rolling down his face and dripping into the grass.

It seems like forever they stand there. Jack doesn’t move, not wanting to break the spell, but finally he can feel his foot going to sleep. As he tries to shake the tingle out, the bird finally spreads its wings.

Mac watches the oriole fly away, head tilted up, sun shining through his messy hair and making him glow. When he looks back at Jack, there’s more light in his eyes than Jack ever thought he’d see again.

“I thought they’d hate me. I thought everything would be able to smell the death on me.”

“Nothing he did could ever put out the light in you.” Jack holds him tightly. “Now let’s get back before Matty throws both our asses under the bus, okay?”

They get back before nine, barely. They have a hunt that night, Jack and Riley and Bozer, and when he stops in to see Mac afterward the room is full of plants. Potted ones. Little flowers, a couple cacti, even a small tree. Jack isn’t sure where they all came from, but he doesn’t ask about the smears of potting soil on Matty’s jacket. Maybe she talked to Cage too.

Maybe it’s the plants, or the escape, or maybe it’s just time. But Mac starts getting better. He’s been talking to Cage more, and Jack’s considering begging Matty on his knees to keep the girl, just in case she hasn’t already seen that having another fae around is good for Mac. Maybe they did have a rocky start, but she’s smart and no-nonsense and a damn good hunter. The Phoenix could use her.

Mac’s finally up to moving around, and the day they get to take him home is one Jack’s not going to forget anytime soon. The kid lights up like a jar full of fireflies when he gets inside. He’s practically hugging the tree in the middle of the house. And for once Riley isn’t even taking blackmail pictures.

Jack still spends most of his nights at the house, because Mac may be recovering, but the nightmares aren’t giving up any time soon. Mac wakes screaming, or crying, or shaking and clutching at anything he can use to cover himself. Jack’s taken to sleeping on the floor in his room so he can try and get the kid out of that awful place in his head as fast as possible.

They’re sitting at the table one evening, too early, _way too early,_ but at least Mac’s sleeping till four now. It’s been almost six months, Jack realizes, since the whole damn thing started, when his phone rings.

“Matty?” He wonders if he should go outside. Maybe this isn’t a call Mac’s supposed to hear. But Matty doesn’t give him time to stand up.

“Some kids found a body dump while they were out getting high behind a mechanics’ shop. We’ve got a rogue on the loose.” Jack knows Mac can hear Matty’s voice; the woman isn’t known for being quiet.

He sneaks a look over, and sees fear warring with duty in Mac’s face. After three months safe, Mac’s probably beginning to feel guilty about not getting back in the game. Jack knows how much the kid likes to blame himself.

“There was one camera Riley was able to clean up a little. It looks like Carpenter’s back in town.” Jack can’t help it, he hangs up. He’ll text Matty and let her know he’s on his way in. But oh man, _Mac._

Mac has gone stiff. His eyes are shining with tears. But then he looks at Jack. “It should be me. I should bring her in. She’s my fault,” Jack has long ago stopped arguing that, because it just makes Mac more upset, “and I owe it to her to put her at rest.” He seems less sad than simply resigned. “It’s the only thing I can still do for her.” He starts to stand, then stops. “I-I don’t know…”

Jack decides it’s time to stop tiptoeing around Mac. The kid doesn’t trust himself, and he sees himself differently, after everything. He doubts his place on the team, and more than anything, he doubts his relationship with his friends. Jack just wants to remind him that some things never change. Like how much he’s always going to care about this so-smart-he’s-dumb little fae kid.

But this is a calculated risk. He’s agonized over this more than any tactical decision in his career. If he’s too much, or too fast, or too flippant, or too pushy, or too…anything, Mac’s going to retreat even further.

Jack stands up, grabs his jacket and whip from the back of the chair. “So you coming or not, Tinkerbell?”

It's so small. Just a hint of a smile. But it's a place to begin. Mac grabs his beat-up leather jacket from the wall and tosses Jack his GTO keys. Jack throws his arm around the kid’s shoulders. _Yeah, we’re gonna be okay._


End file.
